Recovery Manager (RMAN) is an Oracle Database client that performs backup and recovery tasks on your databases and automates administration of your backup strategies. It greatly simplifies backing up, restoring, and recovering database files. The RMAN environment consists of the utilities and databases that play a role in backing up your data. At a minimum, the environment for RMAN must include the following components:
- A target database: An Oracle database to which RMAN is connected with the TARGET keyword. A target database is a database on which RMAN is performing backup and recovery operations. RMAN always maintains metadata about its operations on a database in the control file of the database. The RMAN metadata is known as the RMAN repository.
- RMAN client: An Oracle Database executable that interprets commands, directs server sessions to execute those commands, and records its activity in the target database control file. The RMAN executable is automatically installed with the database and is typically located in the same directory as the other database executables. For example, the RMAN client on Linux is located in $ORACLE_HOME/bin.
Some environments use the following optional components: