Backup Recovery   «Prev  Next»

Lesson 2Use Recovery Manager interactively
ObjectiveStart up Recovery Manager (RMAN) and explore its features.

Use Recovery Manager Interactively

The release of Oracle8 added extensive backup and recovery functionality, including:
  1. An increase in usability, reliability, and performance
  2. Automation of backup, restore, and recovery operations
  3. Incremental backups at the Oracle block level for high performance backup and recovery
  4. Support for Oracle Parallel Server backup and recovery
  5. Backing up a database without interrupting current business functions

However, the Recovery Manager in Oracle8i now provides an integrated method for creating, managing, and restoring backups of a database. The original objective in creating the Recovery Manager was to provide greater ease of management and administration of the backup and recovery operations while maintaining superior performance and increased availability of the database.

New Recovery Manager functionality within Oracle8i

Oracle8i, the database for Internet computing, builds upon the Recovery Manager capabilities introduced with Oracle8. In addition to the enhancements made to Oracle 8, Oracle8i Recovery Manager functionality includes:
  1. Proxy copy
  2. Disk affinity
  3. LIST command enhancements
  4. Recovery Catalog cross check
  5. Multiplexed backup sets
  6. Control file character set specification
  7. STARTUP and SHUTDOWN commands
  8. Clone command
  9. Automatic catalog maintenance
The following table outlines the backup and recovery features of RMAN:

Backup type Definition
Full A backup that is non-incremental, that is it backs up all used data blocks within the datafiles.
Incremental A backup of datafiles that includes only the blocks that have changed since a previous incremental backup. Incremental backups require an incremental level 0 backup to serve as the basis.
Full backups cannot be included within an incremental strategy, although an RMAN copy made within the level parameter can be included.
Open A backup of any part of the target database when it is open.
Closed A backup of any part of the target database when it is mounted but not open. Closed backups can be consistent or inconsistent.
Consistent A backup taken when the database is mounted (but not open) and was not crashed or shut down with the ABORT option prior to mounting.
Inconsistent A backup of any part of the target database when:
  1. It is open.
  2. It crashed prior to mounting.
  3. It was shut down with the ABORT option prior to mounting.

You can perform backups of any of the following objects by using the RMAN backup command:
  1. Database (all datafiles and current control file)
  2. Tablespace
  3. Datafile (current or image copy)
  4. Archived redo log
  5. Control file (current or image copy)
RMAN can restore the following from disks or tapes:
  1. A database
  2. Tablespaces and datafiles
  3. Control files
  4. Archived redo logs
  5. Restoring in preparation for incomplete recovery
The following SlideShow outlines the steps for starting up RMAN.
Oracle Recovery Manager
The next lesson explains how to create a recovery catalog.