Saturday, August 8, 2015

RMAN Q & A page - 1

RMAN INTERVIEW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS


                                                                     Page – 1


1.    What is RMAN and how does on can use it?

Recovery  Manager(RMAN) is an oracle provided utility for backup restoring and recovering  oracle database. RMAN ships with the database server and doesn’t  require a separate installation. The RMAN executable  is located in your ORACLE_HOME/bin directory

In fact RMAN, is just  like a Pro*C application that translates commands to a PL/SQL  interface. The PL/SQL calls are statically linked into the  oracle kernel, and does not require the database to be opened (mapped from the ?/rdms/admin/recover.bsq file)

RMAN can do off-line and on-line database backup. It cannot, however, write directly to the  tape, but various 3rd party tools(like Veritas, Omniback(HP Data Protector), etc ) can integrated with RMAN to handle  tape library management

2.
    What are the architectural components in RMAN?

RMAN executable
Server processes
Channels
Target database
Recovery catalog database (optional)
Media management  layer (optional)
Backup, backup sets and backup pieces
Target database
Recovery catalog database (optional)
Media management  layer (optional)
Backup, backup sets and backup pieces

3. WHY USE RMAN ?
Proper security
You are 100% sure your database has been backed up.  
Its contains detail of the backups taken etc in its central repository
Facility for testing validity of backups also commands like crosscheck to check the status of backup.
Faster backups and restores compared to backups without RMAN
RMAN is the only backup tool which supports incremental backups.
Oracle 10g has got further optimized incremental backup which has resulted in improvement of performance during backup and recovery time
Parallel operations are supported
Better querying facility for knowing different details of backup
Maintains repository of backup metadata
Remembers backup set location Knows what need to backed up 

4. Which files must be backed up?

Database files(with RMAN)
Control files ( with RMAN)
Offline redolog files(with RMAN)
INIT.ORA(manually)
Password files ( manually)

5. What are  channels?

A channel is an RMAN server process started when  there is a need to  communicate with an I/O device. Such as a disk or a tape. A channel is what  reads and writes RMAN backup files. It is through  the allocation of channels that govern I/O characteristics such as 

Types of I/O device being  read or written to, either a disk or an sbt_tape
Number of processes  simultaneously accessing an I/O device
Max size of files created on I/O devices
Max rate at which  database files are read
Max number of files open at a time 

6. Why is the catalog optional?

Because RMAN manage backup and recovery  operations, it  requires a place  to store necessary  information  about the  database. RMAN always stores this information in the target database control file. You can also  store RMAN metadata is a recovery catalog  schema contained in a separate  database. The recovery  catalog.
Schema must be stored in a database other than the target database

7. What is the backup set?

A logical  group of backup files-the backup pieces- that are created  when you issue an RMAN backup command. A  backup set is RMAN’s name for a collection of files associated  with a backup. A backup set is composed  of one or more backup pieces.

8. How does one backup and restore  a database using RMAN?

The biggest advantage of RMAN is that  it only backup used space in the  database. RMAN doesn’t  put tablespaces in  backup mode, saving on redo generation  overhead. RMAN will  re-read database blocks until it gets a consistent image of it. Look as this simple backup  

9. Where should  the catalog be created?

The recovery catalog  to be used  by the RMAN should  be created separate database  other  than the target database. The reason  been that the target database  wil be shutdown  while  data files  are restored

10. How many  times does oracle   ask before dropping a catalog?

The default is tow times one for the actual  command , the other for conformation, knows what backups are redundant

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