Oracle RMAN Commands List

Here is the list of key most RMAN commands that are used for Backup and related activities:

LIST Commands

LIST Commands are generic RMAN commands that will show/list various types of information when executed within RMAN utility.

RMAN> list backup;

It lists all the backups taken using RMAN utility.

RMAN> list backup of database;

The above command lists out all the (individual) files that are in the backup.

RMAN> list backup of tablespace system;

The above command lists out all the files that are in the backup that belong to the tablespace ‘system’.

RMAN> list backup of control file;

The above command lists out all backups of the control file.

CONFIGURE Commands

CONFIGURE commands in RMAN are used to configure/setup various initial settings:

RMAN>CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY TO REDUNDANCY2;

The above commands indicates how many days the backup copies need to be retained. Default is 1 day.

RMAN> CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY CLEAR;

The above command resets the Retention policy to the default value of 1 day.

CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION ON;

The above command verifies to make sure that identical files are NOT backed up to the device specified.

CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION CLEAR;

The above command resets the Optimization option to the default value.

SHOW Commands

Show commands are used to show/display the configuration setting values.

RMAN> show all;

The above command shows all the current configuration settings on the screen.

RMAN> show retention policy;

The above command shows the current retention policy.

RMAN> show default device type;

The above command shows the default device type configured for backups.

RMAN> show datafile backup copies;

The above command shows the number of backup copies available in the target database.

BACKUP Commands

Backup commands are the real commands which do the actual backup work.

RMAN> backup database;

The above command backs up the database (target).

RMAN> backup database include current controlfile plus archive log;

The above command backs up the target database and the current control file and archive log files.

REPORT Commands

Report commands list/report specific information. The difference between report and list command is report command output is in a better format.

RMAN> report obsolete;

The above command reports which backups can be deleted.

DELETE Commands

Delete commands delete/remove specific items from the server, repository catalog.

RMAN> delete obsolete;

The above command deletes all the backups that are older based on the retention policy setup.