Oracle RMAN Pocket Reference

Using RMAN without a catalog

RMAN can be used out of the box to back up, restore, and recover a database without setting up a catalog. You may decide not to use a catalog because you have limited resources or because you want a quick and easy backup and recovery mechanism for your databases. This section points out the issues you need to be aware of if you choose this route:

• If you are using Oracle8i or an earlier version, you may not be able to recover your database if you lose all of your control files. If this happens, you may not be able to recover your database. If you exclusively use the target control files for the repository, you must put into place a mechanism that backs up your control files. (This should be a standard practice anyway.) You should also multiplex your control files to multiple disk drives.

Note

If you do not use a catalog, make sure that your control files are backed up via the ALTER DATABASE BACKUP CONTROLFILE command.

• The amount of history maintained about RMAN operations is limited.

• You lose some flexibility returning to previous versions of backup sets. If you discover you have a bad backup set (i.e., it is corrupt or lost), you need to tell RMAN to go to a previous version of a backup. Without a catalog you lose some flexibility when marking backup sets as unusable.

• You may need to increase the size of the init.ora parameter CONTROL_FILE_RECORD_KEEP_TIME. This parameter controls the number of days backup and recovery information is stored in the control ...