Creating a Recovery Catalog – RMAN in Oracle 10g

As we all know, RMAN maintains metadata about the target database and its backup and
recovery operations in the RMAN repository. The RMAN repository data is always in the control file of the target database. The CONTROL_FILE_RECORD_KEEP_TIME initialization parameter controls how long backup records are kept in the control file before those records are re-used to hold information about more recent backups. By default this parameter set to 7 days.

Another copy of the RMAN repository data can also be saved in the recovery catalog.

Using a recovery catalog preserves RMAN repository information if the control file is lost, making it much easier to restore and recover following the loss of the control file. (A backup control file may not contain complete information about recent available backups.) The recovery catalog can also store a much more extensive history of your backups than the control file, due to limits on the number of control file records.

In addition to RMAN repository records, the recovery catalog can also hold RMAN stored scripts, sequences of RMAN commands for common backup tasks. Centralized storage of scripts in recovery catalog can be more convenient than working with command files.

Create a new database for RMAN – Recovery catalog database

Note: You can create a small database with minimal sizes of tablespaces and others, and you can name the database as CATDB for naming convention and to avoid the confusion between your production and rman databases.

Create a new tablespace in the new database (CATDB)

$ sqlplus /nolog

CONNECT SYS/passwd@catdb AS SYSDBA;

CREATE TABLESPACE rman
DATAFILE '/u02/app/oradata/rman/rman01.dbf' size 100m;

Create the Recovery Catalog Owner in the new database (CATDB)

CREATE USER rman IDENTIFIED BY rman
DEFAULT TABLESPACE rman
QUOTA UNLIMITED ON rman;

Grant the necessary privileges to the schema owner

SQL> GRANT connect, resource, recovery_catalog_owner TO rman;

Here the role "RECOVERY_CATALOG_OWNER" provides the user with all privileges required to maintain and query the recovery catalog

Creating the Recovery Catalog

Connect to the database which will contain the catalog as the catalog owner. For example:

$ rman catalog rman/passwd@catdb

Recovery Manager: Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production on Sun Apr 1 14:22:13 2007
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.
connected to recovery catalog database
RMAN>

Run the CREATE CATALOG command to create the catalog

RMAN> CREATE CATALOG;

recovery catalog created

Registering a Database in the Recovery Catalog

Connect to the target database and recovery catalog database.

$ ORACLE_SID=prod; export ORACLE_SID

$ rman target / catalog rman/passwd@catdb

Recovery Manager: Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production on Sun Apr 1 14:25:30 2007
Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.
connected to target database: PROD (DBID=3677528376)
connected to recovery catalog database

RMAN> REGISTER DATABASE;

database registered in recovery catalog
starting full resync of recovery catalog
full resync complete

Make sure that the registration was successful by running REPORT SCHEMA:

RMAN> REPORT SCHEMA;

Report of database schema

List of Permanent Datafiles
===========================
File Size(MB) Tablespace RB segs Datafile Name
---- -------- -------------------- ------- ------------------------
1 500 SYSTEM YES /u02/app/oradata/prod/system01.dbf
2 200 UNDOTBS1 YES /u02/app/oradata/prod/undotbs01.dbf
3 325 SYSAUX NO /u02/app/oradata/prod/sysaux01.dbf
4 100 EXAMPLE NO /u02/app/oradata/prod/example01.dbf

List of Temporary Files
=======================
File Size(MB) Tablespace Maxsize(MB) Tempfile Name
---- -------- -------------------- ----------- --------------------
1 200 TEMP 200 /u02/app/oradata/prod/temp01.dbf

Reference: Please go through the Oracle Documents for RMAN concepts.
http://download-uk.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/backup.102/b14191/toc.htm

Regards,
Sabdar Ssyed.