RAC database rman duplication question

Question

When I refresh a RAC test system from production, I use RMAN duplicate.  My overall steps are:
backup prod using rman
on test system:
in the init.ora/spfile change parameter cluster_database=false
shutdown test db
startup nomount
use rman duplicate to restore/recover the datafiles
alter database open resetlogs
open the database
shutdown the db
in the init.ora/spfile set cluster_database=true
startup the db with srvctl and it starts up the 5 node RAC - srvctl start database -d TEST
My colleague runs RCONFIG after the database restore and after reading through the Oracle docs, I am not sure whether that is required or not.  I thought RCONFIG was to convert a single instance to RAC --which technically is what we are doing....but I thought this was used only when creating the TEST RAC database for the first time, and after everything was configured, you could refresh without running RCONFIG.   Anybody have any recommendations/knowledge on this I would really appreciate it.  My colleague does not want to run RCONFIG if its not required, but if I am missing some finer point in my method I don't want to say you don't need to run RCONFIG. But I will say, I have cloned RAC for years without RCONFIG.    Thanks everyone.
-Lori

Answer 1

As you said, rconfig is the tool for converting a single instance database to cluster database.
Rconfig creates the configuration for a cluster database, updates the spfile with the necessary changes, adds new redo threads and undo tablespaces for the additional instances.
When you duplicate a database that already has these, it is not necessary to run rconfig.