RE: RMAN - To Catalog or not to catalog, that is the question

From: DENNIS WILLIAMS <DWILLIAMS_at_LIFETOUCH.COM>
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 2004 08:46:18 -0500
Message-ID: <0186754BC82DD511B5C600B0D0AAC4D607B00785@EXCHMN3>

Ron

Joe and Fuad make some excellent points, so I won't repeat those. I never got hot backup working, so I can't respond to that issue. Perhaps someone else on the list can. My gut reaction is that if you have something that works, has been tested, and you trust, then stick with that.

As far as RMAN catalog or not, I would make the following points:

Nocatalog (controlfile mode) was enhanced considerably in 9i.
Catalog can give you a central view of all backups across your system. For example, on 9i I went nocatalog and have a script that sends me the success/failure. But if somehow the cron job stops working, I might not notice that I didn't receive an email.
Catalog mode can make upgrades frustrating. In general the catalog database must be kept at a level ahead of the target databases.
Even in catalog mode, the backup information is still stored in the controlfile, so you can still perform a distaster recovery without using the catalog. That is my standard procedure.

-----Original Message-----
From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org [mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org]On Behalf Of Smith, Ron L.
Sent: Wednesday, June 09, 2004 8:29 AM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: RMAN - To Catalog or not to catalog, that is the question

We are getting ready to start using RMAN on several new 9i Linux databases. I guess the first question would be is RMAN really that much better then using home grown dynamic hot backup scripts? We have developed these for our Oracle/NT environment and they seem to work fine. The second question would be should we use a recovery catalog? The catalog seems to add a lot of complexity to the setup and to a disaster recovery plan.

Thanks!
Ron

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Received on Wed Jun 09 2004 - 08:46:33 CDT