Exclude Tablespace from RMAN Backup

SkipTablespace from RMAN Backup

There are many times requirement when we want to ignore one or many tablespaces while backing up /restoring or cloning the database. In this post I will show you how you can archive this

Exclude a Tablespace from Backup.

You can use RMAN configure command to update the configuration as shown below

$ rman  target / catalog rman/xxxx@rcat.oracle.com

connected to target database: orcl(DBID=63198018)
connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN> Configure exclude for tablespace TOOLS;

Tablespace TOOLS will be excluded from future whole database backups
new RMAN configuration parameters are successfully stored.

Now if you backup your database by:

RMAN> BACKUP DATABASE;

Tablespace TOOLS will always be execluded.

How to see which Tablespace is execluded from RMAN backup

You can see which table is excluded from your backup strategy:

RMAN> show exclude;

RMAN configuration parameters for database with db_unique_name ORCL are:
CONFIGURE EXCLUDE FOR TABLESPACE USERS;

How to backup the Excluded tablespace

If  you already configure "exclude" option, even then you can backup the excluded tablespsace by explicitly specifying them in a Backup command or by specifying the “NOEXCLUDE” option on a Backup Database command as:

RMAN> backup database NOEXCLUDE;

How to enable the backup for an Excluded Tablespace again

You can disable the exclude tablespace feature as:

RMAN> configure exclude for tablespace TOOLS clear;

Tablespace USERS will be included in future whole database backups
old RMAN configuration parameters are successfully deleted

RMAN> show exclude;

RMAN configuration parameters for database with db_unique_name ORCL are:
RMAN configuration has no stored or default parameters

How to skip readonly and offline tablespace backup

RMAN>backup database skip READONLY, skip OFFLINE;

How to restore and recover database from excluded tablespace backup?

RMAN> Restore database skip tablespace 'tootls';
RMAN> alter database mount;
RMAN> Recover database SKIP tablespace 'tools';