Re: 8i backup and recovery

I say yuk RMAN because it seams that Oracle support nowadays doesn't even know how to recover or backup a database the *old fashioned* way.
Listen to this and have a laugh :
One day I wanted to clone a db using hot backups/recreate controlfile/recover/rename global db.
It was an 8.1.7.2 and it gave me an ORA-600 - so I call Oracle Support. This guy just tells me flat out that what I'm doing is not supported and I'm in the 'gray' zone of Oracle - instead
he suggests :
1. create an empty DB
2. do an export rows=n on the source DB and import in the target DB in order to get the segments and datadictionary 'in sync' (sic) 3. then offline the tablespaces in the target DB and overwrite them by the datafiles from the source DB
4. online the tablespaces

I thought I was going mad - this guy didn't have a clue what he was talking about and he was sitting at the support desk of Oracle so I told him to piss off ! I had cloned a DB many, many times before and the explanation he was giving was total crap !

I actually found out one of the datafiles I copied over was not a multiple of the DB block size. But it shows that new guys don't have a clue what's going on when you recover a database and I think RMAN is to blame. I avoid it as much as possible unless I have to work with Legato or Tivoli (even then I script around it most of the times).

At the end of it all if you use a catalog - how do you back it up - again with RMAN ? (it's the chicken and the egg) - most of the DBA's I know have only limited knowledge of RMAN (there's this chapter in the OCP exam remember) so I'll bet that 95% of the DBA's know how to install and configure RMAN but when stress comes in and they'll need to recover with RMAN they'll fail horrible. And I admit I'm one of them - so I'll stick to good o'll home brewed scripting - how can you expect perfection if you didn't write it yourself :-))

To quote a good friend and fellow DBA of mine : RMAN is for pussy GUI dba's ... but then again - it's just an opinion... Some managers of course force the DBA's to use RMAN but I still have to meet first one who really likes it ...

"godmann" <allanwtham_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:95cd51c.0111181912.7ecedd07_at_posting.google.com...
> Koert54,
>
> Why do you say Yuck to Rman? At least I found that it's better than
normal
> physical O/S (hotbackup) kinda of thing. I guess preference is different.
>
> Oracle 8i backup and recovery by rama velpuri does mention about the
Rman and
> it's should be sufficient for normal use. More info can be found in Oracle
> documentation but I do find it very dry reading it.
>
> I wonder Howard can upgrade his steps in Rman to Oracle 8.1.7. Oracle
8.0.x
> is kinda old. Howard did a good job though!! I got a copy of his work too.
>
> Allan W. Tham
> DBA
Received on Mon Nov 19 2001 - 16:04:49 CST