Introducing Arcserve Backup Agents and Options › Using Agents › Agent for Oracle › Using the Agent in RMAN Mode › Backup and Restore Limitations using the RMAN Mode

Backup and Restore Limitations using the RMAN Mode

Some of the backup limitations include:

• You cannot duplicate the Catalog database SID or share it with any other SID name.
• The online redo logs are exclusively locked by Oracle while the Oracle server is online. You can perform an offline backup, if necessary.
• Do not back up individual data files using RMAN.
• The Agent for Oracle backs up the parameter files located under the default location ORALCE_HOME\dbs and ORACLE_HOME\database.

  Note: If your Oracle environment is in Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle Fail Safe (OFS), or the parameter files are not in their default location, see Agent for Oracle does not Back up Non-default Parameter Files to configure and protect these environments.

• The Restore by Media and Restore by Session options are not supported.
• The Agent for Oracle in RMAN mode does not support backing up parameter files on raw devices.
• While performing an RMAN backup job using the Agent for Oracle, if your agent computer is unable to resolve the backup server name (for example, the backup server resides in a different domain using a separate DNS server), you can modify your mgmtsvc.conf and clishell.cfg files manually on both the Arcserve Backup server and the agent computer to ensure proper hostname resolution. For more information about how to resolve this, see Remote Oracle Instance Backup fails in RMAN mode.
• Only accounts with administrative permission can perform RMAN backup and restore job using the Arcserve Backup Agent for Oracle.
• The agent cannot convert Unicode characters.

  To display Unicode characters correctly in RMAN or Arcserve Backup Restore Manager, verify the Oracle DB character set matches the value for the NLS-LANG setting in the registry, as shown in the example below:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE\KEY_OraDb10g_home1
  

  Key: NLS_LANG

  Value: Specify the same value as the Oracle database character set. For example, SIMPLIFIED CHINESE_CHINA.ZHS16GBK.

  Note: This setting also changes the SQL*Plus command-line prompt to the value you specified.

  For more information about customizing your backups, see the Administration Guide.

Some of the restore and recovery limitations include the following:

• Online redo logs are not backed up; consequently, they cannot be restored.
• Catalog database SID should not be duplicated or shared with any other SID name.
• Restore full database will not restore tablespaces in offline mode. If you want to restore them, restore the tablespaces separately. For more information about tablespaces in offline mode, see the Oracle Documentation.
• The agent does not support the backup and restore operations on multiple and combined 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Oracle, simultaneously.