OVERVIEW

Oracle Recovery Manager satisfies the most pressing demands of performance, manageable backup and recovery, for all Oracle data formats.

A complete high availability and disaster recovery strategy requires dependable data backup, restore, and recovery procedures. Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN), a command-line and Enterprise Manager-based tool, is the Oracle-preferred method for efficiently backing up and recovering your Oracle database. RMAN is designed to work intimately with the server, providing block-level corruption detection during backup and restore. RMAN optimizes performance and space consumption during backup with file multiplexing and compression, and integrates with leading tape and storage media products via the supplied Media Management Library (MML) API.

RMAN takes care of all underlying database procedures before and after backup or restore, freeing dependency on OS and SQL*Plus scripts. It provides a common interface for backup tasks across different host operating systems, and offers features not available through user-managed methods, such as binary file compression, parallelization of backup/recovery data streams, backup files retention policy, and detailed history of all backups.

First introduced in the Oracle8 Database, RMAN has since been updated with numerous enhancements in Oracle9i, including block media recovery, autobackup of control files, and resumable backup/recovery in case of failure. With the latest release of RMAN in Oracle Database 10g, a host of new features allow the DBA to: