How to create a Recovery Catalog in Oracle


How to create a Recovery Catalog in Oracle

What is a Recovery Catalog?
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A recovery catalog is a database schema used by RMAN to store metadata about one or more Oracle databases. 

Typically, you store the catalog in a dedicated database. A recovery catalog provides the following benefits:

1. A recovery catalog creates redundancy for the RMAN repository stored in the control file of each target database. The recovery catalog serves as a secondary metadata repository. If the target control file and all backups are lost, then the RMAN metadata still exists in the recovery catalog.

2. A recovery catalog centralizes metadata for all your target databases. Storing the metadata in a single place makes reporting and administration tasks easier to perform.

3. A recovery catalog can store metadata history much longer than the control file. This capability is useful if you must do a recovery that goes further back in time than the historyin the control file. The added complexity of managing a recovery catalog database can be offset by the convenience of having the extended backup history available.

Some RMAN features function only when you use a recovery catalog. For example, you can store RMAN scripts in a recovery catalog. The chief advantage of a stored script is that it is available to any RMAN client that can connect to the target database and recovery catalog. Command files are only available if the RMAN client has access to the file system on which they are stored.

A recovery catalog is required when you use RMAN in a Data Guard environment. By storing backup metadata for all primary and standby databases, the catalog enables you to offload backup tasks to one standby database while enabling you to restore backups on other databases in the environment.



Steps that are needed to create a Recovery Catalog.
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To create a Recovery Catalog, Perform the below mentioned steps:

STEP I
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You have to decide where you are going to store the Recovery Catalog data, that means you have to decide and create (if required) the database that will be used for Recovery Catalog purpose.

Database Name: reccatdb

Please ensure that Recovery Catalog is separate from the target database(s) for which it will store RMAN repository like it should (I will say must) have separate disk space etc. from the target database(s).
It is good to have the Recovery Catalog database in ARCHIVELOG mode.


STEP II
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Now create a user/schema in Recovery Catalog database that will hold the tables of Recovery Catalog. Also create a separate tablespace for the recovery catalog schema. 

1. Start SQL*Plus and connect with administrator privileges to the database containing the recovery catalog. In this example, the database is reccatdb.

2.  Create a user and schema for the recovery catalog. For example, you could enter the following SQL statement:

(Note: The below command is an example only, Please supply your own values at required places.)

SQL>CREATE USER rman_user IDENTIFIED BY rman_pass#345
TEMPORARY TABLESPACE temp
DEFAULT TABLESPACE rman_tab
QUOTA UNLIMITED ON rman_tab;

3.  Grant the RECOVERY_CATALOG_OWNER role to the schema owner. This role provides the user with all privileges required to maintain and query the recovery catalog.

SQL>GRANT RECOVERY_CATALOG_OWNER TO rman_user;


STEP III
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After creating the catalog owner, create the catalog tables with the RMAN CREATE CATALOG command. The command creates the catalog in the default tablespace of the catalog owner.

To create the recovery catalog:

1.  Start RMAN and connect to the database that will contain the catalog. Connect to the database as the recovery catalog owner.

$ rman
RMAN> connect CATALOG rman_user@reccatdb

It will ask for rman_user password. Provide the password that you give to the user while creating it.

2.  Run the CREATE CATALOG command to create the catalog. The creation of the catalog can take several minutes. If the catalog tablespace is the user's default tablespace, then you can run the following command:

RMAN> CREATE CATALOG;

You can specify the tablespace name for the catalog in the CREATE CATALOG command. For example:
RMAN> CREATE CATALOG TABLESPACE cat_tbs;

Note:
If the tablespace name that you want to use for the recovery catalog is an RMAN reserved word, then it must be uppercase and enclosed in quotes. For example: 

RMAN>CREATE CATALOG TABLESPACE 'CATALOG';

3.  You can check the results by using SQL*Plus to query the recovery catalog to see which tables were created:

SQL> SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM USER_TABLES;

You have to connect to database as rman_user [Recovery Catalog Owner].

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