Back Up with RMAN

1. Backup Concepts

    User-managed backup

    Server-managed backup

• Closed backup --- cold, consistent, offline --- the database must be in mount mode, following a clean shutdown
  

             Open backup --- hot, inconsistent, online --- can only be made if the database is in archivelog mode

• Whole backup
  

             Partial backup --- can only be made if the database is in archivelog mode.

• Full backup
  

             Incremental backup --- cumulative / differential --- can be made with server-managed backups, but not with user-managed backups, must always be as backup
sets or compressed backup sets.

• Incremental level 0 backup
• Incremental level 1 backup:extract all blocks that have changed since the last level 1 backup, or the last level 0 backup if there have been no intervening level 1 backups.
• cumulative backup:extract all blocks that have changed since the last level 0 backup, irrespective of whether there have been any level 1 backups in the meantime.
  

2. The file types that can be backed up by RMAN

•  Datafiles
•  Controlfile
•  Archive redo log files
•  SPFILE
•  Backup set pieces
  

3. Files that cannot be backed up by RMAN

• Tempfiles
• Online redo log files
• Password file
• Static PFILE
• Oracle Net configuration files

4. RMAN can generate three types of backup

• A backup set is a proprietary format that can contain several files and will not include blocks of a datafile that are not currently part of a segment --- full or incremental
  
• A compressed backup set has the same content as a backup set, but RMAN will apply a compression algorithm as it writes out the backup set --- full or incremental
  
• An image copy is a backup file that is identical to the input file. An image copy is immediately interchangeable with its source, whereas to extract a file from a backup set requires an RMAN restore operation --- full
  • RMAN reads and writes in Oracle blocks, not operating system blocks.
  • This means that many of the great features of backup sets (such as incremental backup, compression, writing directly to tape, or controlling the size of the output pieces) cannot be used.
  • A restore can be very fast, because there is no need to extract the file from a backup set.
  • Tape channels cannot be used for image copies.
    

5. RMAN repository

The RMAN repository is metadata about backups, it is stored in the controlfile of the target database, and optinally in a set of tables created in a catalog database.