Configuring and Backing Up Oracle Databases Using RMAN - OCP: Oracle Database 12c Administrator Certified Professional - page 158

You can also back up spfiles with RMAN using the BACKUP SPFILE command, as shown
in this example:
RMAN>Backup spfile;
Backing Up RMAN Backup Sets
Often database backups will be initially made to disk, and then later those backups will
be backed up to tape. The reason for this is that backing up to disk is generally much
faster than backing up to tape. Yet you want to back up to tape so you can offsite the
media and because tape tends to be less expensive for longer-term storage (though this is
quickly becoming less true).
To back up a backup set, you use the BACKUP BACKUP SET command, as shown here:
RMAN> backup device type sbt Backup Set all;
Backing Up the RMAN FRA
It is not unusual for an enterprise to have a multitiered backup strategy where the most
current backups are in the FRA which exists on local disk. However, it is critical to those
backup strategies to be able to move copies of those backup sets easily to other media that
is not on the local server.
The BACKUP RECOVERY AREA RMAN command is used for this situation. This command will
take all backup files in the FRA and move them to another disk or SBT location. RMAN will
maintain a record of the location of both the files on the FRA and the copies of these files in
the tier-two backup location.
The backups in the FRA will be managed by the retention criteria, but the location of
the FRA backup files will not be managed by the retention criteria. Thus, you will need to
implement separate retention criteria by using RMAN DELETE OBSOLETE command.
Here is an example of backing up files from the FRA to a secondary location. We then
allocate a maintenance channel to the alternate backup location and delete backups that
are older than 31 days old.
We have included an alter system command at the top of this example. If
you do not configure at least a single LOG_ARCHIVE_DEST_N destination
directory to the location USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST, then you will
find that the backup recovery area command will continue to backup all of
the files in the FRA, not just the newly created ones.
-- You only need to run the alter system command once.
Alter system set log_archive_dest_10=' LOCATION=USE_DB_RECOVERY_FILE_DEST';
Backup recovery area to destination 'c:\backup_copies';