RE: [oracle-l] A few rman questions

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Ruth Gramolini wrote:

> Dan,
>
> Robert Freeman has written a great rman book but I think the best place to
> start is with the Backup and Recovery Manual which is part of the Oracle
> documentation. In order to do point in time or complete recovery you need
> to have rman backups and controlfile backups. You can set up you rman
> configuration files to to autocontrolfile backups at the end of every backup
> and this will make a copy of your controlifle to a place you specify as the
> last step as well as the normal backup of the controlfile which is contained
> in a level 0 rman backup. With this feature, the controlfile which has the
> necessary info can be restored. Have a look at rman configurations in the
> docs.

Thanks for the reply. I'll look into Robert's book. As Dennis reminded me, I failed to indicate which version of Oracle I'm using. I'm running 8.1.7 on Solaris 7. How 'backwards compatible' would Robert's book (titled for 9i) be for me, still on 8i?

I have been spending a fair amount of time in the Oracle docs, but while the docs are good at telling you what's available, and how to use it, they don't so often tell (in practical terms, like Dennis provided in his reply, about controlfile issues) you why one method is preferable over another (e.g., 'copy' vs. 'backup'), and hence my question about 'Best practices'.

I just received a copy of the 'Oracle8i Backup & Recovery Handbook', but a first glance seems to indicate that it's not gonna give me too much more than the Oracle docs (except perhaps, more examples).

Thanks for your recommendations.

• Dan

>
> Good luck,
> Ruth
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
> [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]On Behalf Of Daniel Hanks
> Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 4:59 PM
> To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
> Subject: [oracle-l] A few rman questions
>
>
> I'm in the process of revamping our backup system (which is
> mostly inherited from another DBA), and had a few questions about
> rman I've come across as I review the system.
>
> 1) 'copy' vs. 'backup'. In our current setup, we use the 'backup'
> rman command to handle the datafiles, and the archive logs, but
> 'copy' is used to backup the controlfile. The Oracle
> documentation says this:
>
> "In many cases, copying datafiles is more beneficial than backing
> them up, since the output is suitable for use without any
> additional processing. In contrast, you must process a backup set
> with a restore command before it is usable. So, you can perform
> media recovery on a datafile copy, but not directly on a backup
> set, even if it backs up only one datafile and contains a single
> backup piece."
>
> So am I better off just leaving the controlfiles (since they're
> small) handled by 'copy' instead of 'backup'? Is having to
> process a backup set containing one controlfile with a 'restore'
> command that much of an issue? Maybe making a backup set of a
> single controlfile is overkill?
>
> 2) Are there any "Best practices" documents with respect to rman
> that list members would recommend?
>
> Thanks again for your helpful comments,
>
> -- Dan
> ========================================================================
> Daniel Hanks - Systems/Database Administrator
> About Inc., Web Services Division
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   About Inc., Web Services Division
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