Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Autonomous Database RMAN Recovery Catalog

You can use Oracle Autonomous Database as a Recovery Manager (RMAN) recovery catalog. A recovery catalog is a database schema that RMAN uses to store metadata about one or more Oracle databases.

  • Use Autonomous Database as an RMAN Recovery Catalog
    Recovery Manager (RMAN) recovery catalog is preinstalled in Autonomous Database in schema RMAN$CATALOG. The preinstalled catalog version is based on the latest version of Oracle Database and is compatible with all supported Oracle database versions.

Parent topic: Autonomous Database for Experienced Oracle Database Users

Use Autonomous Database as an RMAN Recovery Catalog

Recovery Manager (RMAN) recovery catalog is preinstalled in Autonomous Database in schema RMAN$CATALOG. The preinstalled catalog version is based on the latest version of Oracle Database and is compatible with all supported Oracle database versions.

The recovery catalog contains metadata about RMAN operations for each registered target database. When RMAN is connected to a recovery catalog, RMAN obtains its metadata exclusively from the catalog.

Note

Autonomous Database is not supported as an RMAN target database. An RMAN target database is an Oracle Database to which RMAN is connected with the TARGET keyword. A target database is a database on which RMAN is performing backup and recovery operations. See Backup and Restore Autonomous Database Instances for information on Autonomous Database backup and recovery operations.

Access to RMAN Recovery Catalog

Access to the recovery catalog is provided through predefined user RMAN$CATALOG with the appropriate access to the recovery catalog only. The RMAN$CATALOG user is locked by default.

You can either proxy to the predefined user RMAN$CATALOG through the ADMIN user or explicitly unlock the preinstalled schema:

  • ADMIN user proxy into RMAN$CATALOG using ADMIN user's password: 

    connect admin[rman$catalog]/password@connect_string

  • ADMIN user can set a password for RMAN$CATALOG. Then the RMAN$CATALOG user can directly connect: 

    connect admin/password@connect_string
alter user rman$catalog identified by password account unlock; 
connect rman$catalog/password@connect_string

Use the RMAN Recovery Catalog

You can use the RMAN recovery catalog by connecting RMAN to the preinstalled recovery catalog. Registering a target database in the recovery catalog maintains the database’s records in the recovery catalog. For example, to register a target database:

RMAN> connect catalog rman$catalog/password@connect_string;

connected to recovery catalog database
recovery catalog schema version 21.01.00.00. is newer than RMAN version

RMAN> register database;
database registered in recovery catalog
starting full resync of recovery catalog

To use your Autonomous Database as a recovery catalog, it is recommended to connect with the LOW service.

See Registering a Database in the Recovery Catalog for more details about using the RMAN recovery catalog.