RMAN COMMANDS

Hi,
We use RMAN COMMANDS for doing lot of tasks like backup,cloning,conversion of filesystems from NON-ASM to ASM and vice-versa.The commands of RMAN are many so I decided to make a note of few crucial ones,hope it can be useful.

There are two types of RMAN commands:
1)Stand-alone:Executed at the RMAN prompt and are generally self-contained. CHANGE, CONNECT,CREATE CATALOG, RESYNC CATALOG. CREATE SCRIPT, DELETE SCRIPT, REPLACE SCRIPT etc.
2)JOB:These are usually grouped and RMAN executes this commands inside of RUN command block sequentially. If any command fails, RMAN ceases processing, no further commands within the block are executed.

•THE CONFIGURE COMMAND :
 CONFIGURE AUTOMATIC CHANNEL :
RMAN > CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE DISK FORMAT ‘/db01/backup/%U’;

 IMPLEMENT RETENTION POLICY BY SPECIFYING RECOVERY WINDOW :
RMAN >CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY TO RECOVERY WINDOW OF 7 days ;
- Recovery window: a period of time that begins with the current time and extends backward in time to the point of recoverability. In above example, the command ensures that for each data file, one back up that is older than the point of recoverability (7 days) must be retained.

 IMPLEMENT RETENTION POLICY BY SPECIFYING REDUNDANCY:
RMAN >CONFIGURE REDUNDANCY POLICY TO REDUNDANCY 2;
- Redundancy value indicates that any number of backups or copies beyond a specified number need not be retained. The default is 1 day.

 CONFIGURE DUPLEXED BACKUP SETS:
RMAN >CONFIGURE DATAFILE BACKUP COPIES FOR DEVICE TYPE disk TO 2;

- We can create up to 4 copies (in above example 2) of each back up piece in a backup set for all backup commands that use automatic channels. This applies only for datafiles and archived redo log files.

 CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION:
RMAN >CONFIGURE BACKUP OPTIMIZATION ON;
- With this setting on, the BACKUP command does not backup files to a device type if the identical file has already been backed up to the device type. For two files to be identical, there contents must be exactly the same. Default value is off.

 USE THE CLEAR OPTION TO RETURN TO THE DEFAULT VALUE:
RMAN >CONFIGURE RETENTION POLICY CLEAR;
RMAN >CONFIGURE CHANNEL DEVICE TYPE sbt CLEAR;

•THE SHOW COMMAND :
- This command displays persistent configuration settings.
 AUTOMATIC CHANNEL CONFIGURATION SETTINGS:
RMAN>SHOW CHANNEL;
RMAN>SHOW DEVICE TYPE;
RMAN>SHOW DEFAULT DEVICE TYPE;

 RMAN RETENTION POLICY CONFIGURATION SETTINGS:
RMAN>SHOW RETENTION POLICY;

 NUMBER OF BACKUP COPIES:
SHOW DATAFILE BACKUP COPIES;

 MAXIMUM SIZE OF BACKUP SETS:
SHOW MAXSETSIZE;

 TABLESPACES EXCLUDED FROM WHOLE DATABASE BACKUP:
SHOW EXCLUDE;

 STATUS OF BACKUP OPTIMIZATON:
SHOW BACKUP OPTIMIZATION;

•LIST COMMAND:
- LIST command is used to produce a detailed report listing all information for the following.

 LIST BACKUPS OF ALL FILES IN THE DATABASE:
RMAN >LIST BACKUP OF DATABASE;

 LIST ALL BACKUP SETS CONTAINING THE uses1.dbf DATAFILE:
RMAN >LIST BACKUP OF DATAFILE ”/db1/oradata/u03/users1.dbf”;

 LIST ALL COPIES OF DATAFILES IN THE SYSTEM TABLESPACE:
RMAN >LIST COPY OF TABLESPACE “SYSTEM”;

•THE REPORT COMMAND:
- This command helps to analyze information in the RMAN repository in more detail.

 WHAT IS THE STRUCTURE OF THE DATABASE?
RMAN >REPORT SCHEMA;

 WHICH FILES NEED TO BE BACKED UP?
RMAN >REPORT NEED BACKUP …;

WHICH BACKUPS CAN BE DELETED?
RMAN >REPORT OBSOLETE;

 WHICH FILES ARE NOT RECOVERABLE B’COS OF UNRECOVERABLE OPERATIONS:
RMAN >REPORT UNRECOVERABLE …;

•THE REPORT NEED BACKUP COMMAND :
- This command is used to identify all data files that need a backup. There are three options with this command.

 INCREMENTAL: An integer specifies the maximum number of incremental backups that should be restored during recovery. If this number or more is required then the data file needs a new full backup.

RMAN >REPORT NEED BACKUP incremental 3 database;
This example will report files needing three or more incremental backups for recovery.

 DAYS: An integer specifies max. number of days since the last full or incremental backup of file. The file needs a backup if the most recent backup is equal to or greater than this number.
RMAN >REPORT NEED BACKUP days 3 tablespace system;
To report what system files have not been backed up for three days, use above command.

 REDUNDANCY: An integer specifies the min. level of redundancy considered necessary. For example, redundancy level two requires a backup if there are not two or more backups.
RMAN >REPORT NEED BACKUP redundancy 3;

•RECOVERY MANAGER PACKAGES:
- Two packages named DBMS_RCVCAT AND DBMS_RCVMAN are used by RMAN to perform its tasks.
-DBMS_RCVMAN is created in target database. It queries the control file or recovery catalog.
-DBMS_RCVCAT is used by recovery manager to maintain the information in the recovery catalog.
-DBMS_BACKUP_RESTORE package is created by dbmsbkrs.sql and prvtbkrs.plb script called by catproc.sql. it is used to interface with oracle and os to create,restore and recover bkups of datafiles and archived redo log files.

Hope it helps...I will increase this thread continously as Oracle 11g has lot of new commands.

Happy Oracle learning...