Re: Oracle RMAN Catalog vs. controlfile advantages

>
> if these are the 'benefits' then there is really only one=potentially
> longer history.
>
> You can also create a recovery catalog, an external Oracle database in
> which to store this information. The control file has finite space for
> records of backup activities, while a recovery catalog can store a
> much longer history. The added complexity of operating a recovery
> catalog database can be offset by the convenience of having the
> extended backup history available if you have to do a recovery that
> goes further back in time than the history in the control file.

Allow me to paint a scenario where recovery catalog might come in useful.

If you refresh development ofr test dbs from a production backup and you use the "duplicate database" rman comamnd to do so, then you must keep in the production control file sufficient information for the duplicate commaqnd to know where in time to recover a prior backup to. Otherwise, it errors off with the "file not restored from a sufficiently old backup".

Keeping that information in a separate catalog allows you to get on with production cleanups after rman backups, while keping the ability to duplicate from an earlier backup.

We've recently been in this quandary: used to duplicate our prod backup within the "redundancy" window. Now we ned to duplicate from up to 7 days before. For the time being we've stopped using duplicate, back to just a restore from an ad-hoc backup. Which is a bit of a pain as things like db names and such don't get reset automagically.

Investigating at the moment the creation of a catalog db so we can go back to duplicating. Received on Wed Apr 14 2010 - 20:14:50 CDT