Prerequisites for RMAN backups

Before backing up your database using the rdsadmin.rdsadmin_rman_util package, make sure that you meet the following prerequisites:

• Make sure that your RDS for Oracle database is in ARCHIVELOG mode. To enable this mode, set the backup retention period to a non-zero value.

• When backing up archived redo logs or performing a full or incremental backup that includes archived redo logs, and when backing up the database, make sure that redo log retention is set to a nonzero value. Archived redo logs are required to make database files consistent during recovery. For more information, see Retaining archived redo logs.

• Make sure that your DB instance has sufficient free space to hold the backups. When back up your database, you specify an Oracle directory object as a parameter in the procedure call. RMAN places the files in the specified directory. You can use default directories, such as DATA_PUMP_DIR, or create a new directory. For more information, see Creating and dropping directories in the main data storage space.

  You can monitor the current free space in an RDS for Oracle instance using the CloudWatch metric FreeStorageSpace. We recommend that your free space exceeds the current size of the database, though RMAN backs up only formatted blocks and supports compression.