Recovering a backups from scratch

Question

Hello.
I'm a UNIX SA, not a DBA, so I appologies if I seem alittle daft when it comes to Oracle.
We've been doing RMAN backups of our databases for some time. I handle the NetBackup side of things and our DBA handles the RMAN side. Looking forward to a possible major disaster I'm trying to become more comfortable with using RMAN myself so that I can be more helpful in case of a real disaster. I'd like to be able to recover complete databases from scratch (on a new bare system) for 2 reasons: 1) It allows me to verify (for paranoia reasons) offsite RMAN backups from time to time, and 2) if a real disaster occured that obliterated our current systems completely I would need to get databases recovered so that our DBA could check and get them running rather than just doing the normal SA thing and say "NetBackups ready, have fun".
I've looked through the docs and I bought the 9i RMAN book, but I'm unclear on recovering from a bare system.
How much of the system needs to be installed and/or recovered before I can recover a database? Obviously Oracle itself needs to be installed or recovered from tape, but do I need to create a new empty database before recovery? What do I need to know about the old database before I can recover it from tape?
For testing, completely seperate from our production enviroment, I have a NetBackup server with the RMAN offsite duplications loaded, I've got a system with Oracle installed and 1 empty database and I've linked the RMAN client into Oracle (libobk). Thats the extent of my knowlage as an SA. What do I need to do now to recover the database and bring it online?
Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I am not sure whether if u understood ur question clearly,
but if what u are saying is as follows:
Everyday, the DBA does his backup via RMAN and u backup the RMAN source files via NetBackup to store is offsite and etc?
Current -Full System
Unix OS--> Oracle Software
--> Oracle DB
--> RMAN Bkp
--> NetBackup
Bare System
Unix OS -->
Rebuild System --
Note: make sure the file system is set up the same as it was before.
1. Install the Oracle Software
-Oracle Home on same path/directory as before
2. Restore the RMAN backuped data files (plus control file) and archived log files from NetBackup
-restore should also include the
- init.ora/spfile,
- password file,
3. Restoring them should bring the rman file(s) to their source.
4. Tell the DBA to create the Instance of the database.
-oradim executuable in the $ORACLE_HOME/bin directory
5. DBS should: Connect as sys as sysdba in sqlplus
6. Startup nomount
7. Go to the RMAN catalog database
8. locate the rman executable in $ORACLE_HOME/bin
9. rman> connect sys/pwd@dbname catalog rmanuser/pwd@rman_db
10. issue, rman> list backupset
11. Get the last BS# for db file bkp and archivelog bkp & control file
12. Issue: rman> validate backupset bs#
13. Issue: rman> validate backupset archive_bs#
14. issue: rman> validate backupset ctl_bs#
15. Once validated,
Issue: restore database;
16. rman> restore archivelog; --check for exact syntax
17. rman> restore controlfile;
18. rman> recover database;
19. rman> recover archivelog all ---- this one is a bit tricky, u may need check the syntax, like
rman> recover archivelog until scn and etc.,
20. rman> reset database;
not sure whether if i answered ur question,
email me if u have any questions:
[email protected]