Oracle Tips by Burleson

Oracle Dataguard
Chapter 9 - Recovery Manager and Data Guard

Introduction

RMAN provides a functionality of incremental backup.  This can be very useful when a DBA needs to create a standby database from a very large, in the range of terabytes, primary database. Creating a conventional backup using operating system utilities may take several hours for this type of database.  In those circumstances the DBA can use the advantages offered by Recovery Manager. RMAN always compresses data files in a backup set such that the files in the backup set are a true representative of the amount of data in the database and not the size of the data files. The compression feature can be very useful when the need exists to transfer the backup set to a remote destination over Oracle Net in order to create a physical standby database.

A backup set, image copies, or a combination of both can be used to create a standby database. In this chapter, the information will focus on using RMAN to create standby databases. First, the procedure for creating a physical RAC Grid using a backup set will be presented.  This will be followed by the creation procedure using image copies. The text in this chapter will present the step-by-step process of creating these standby databases.  An example in each section will be used to illustrate the complexities of configuring Data Guard using RMAN.

Additionally, this chapter will present the details on how to create a backup of the RAC Grid using Recovery Manager. Familiarity with Recovery Manager prior to reading this chapter will be extremely useful. Oracle manual, Oracle9i Recovery manager User’s Guide Release 2 (9.2), provides more information on the working of Recovery Manager. The first step will be to cover some of the RMAN terminology that will be used throughout this chapter.

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