Administration Workshop II. 2-14. Using a Flash Recovery Area with RMAN

Flash Recovery Area simplifies managing disk space and files related to backup and recovery:

• When the flash recovery area is used, RMAN automatically uses Oracle Managed Files (OMF) for its backup files.
• Each time RMAN creates a file in the flash recovery area, the Oracle database updates the list of files that are no longer required on disk. When a file needs to be written into the flash recovery area and space is not available for that file, the Oracle database deletes a file that is on the obsolete files list and writes a notification to the alert log.
• A warning is issued when the flash recovery area experiences space pressure or is low on free space because there are no files that can be deleted from the flash recovery area. To resolve the problem, you can:
  
  - add disk space
  - back up your files to a tertiary device
  - delete the files from the flash recovery area using RMAN
  - or change the RMAN retention policy.
  
  The flash recovery area is configured by setting the DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST initialization parameter. The DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST_SIZE parameter specifies its size.