Centralize Oracle RMAN scripts in one server I want to centralize all my Oracle's DB backup shell scripts in one server, and all of them are in different servers, architectures and DB versions. For this purpose I'm going to use the same server where the Recovery Catalog is installed, a rhel6 64bit with 11.2.0.3 DB, and schedule the backup shell scripts via crontab.

This is easily done executing, from the Recovery Catalog server, something like RMAN TARGET SYS@RemoteDBNetIdentifier CATALOG catalogowner@rmanCatalog 

Problem is that, according with the compatibility matrix, RMAN client version must match DB target connected version. http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/backup.112/e10643/compat003.htm#i634479

$ rman target sys@db_prod_1 catalog rman@rcat

Recovery Manager : Release 11.2.0.3.0 - Production on Jue Ago 22 13:27:52 2013

Copyright (c) 1982, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

Contraseña de la base de datos destino:
el paquete PL/SQL SYS.DBMS_BACKUP_RESTORE versión 11.02.00.01 de la base de datos TARGET no es actual
el paquete PL/SQL SYS.DBMS_RCVMAN versión 11.02.00.01 de la base de datos TARGET no es actual
conectado a la base de datos destino: DB_PROD_1 (DBID=943768957)
Contraseña de la base de datos del catálogo de recuperación:
conectado a la base de datos del catálogo de recuperación

RMAN&gt; exit


But I don't want to install every single Oracle DB version in the recovery catalog server.
So I tried to copy JUST the rman executable from the Oracle DB installations in the others servers to the Recovery Catalog server, but it didn't worked

$ scp oracle@SRV_PROD_1:/usr/oracle/product/11.2.0/bin/rman /usr/oracle/product/rman_bin/11.2.0.1/
rman                                    100%   14MB 209.6KB/s   01:06

$ cd product/rman_bin/11.2.0.1/
$ ./rman target sys@db_prod_1 catalog rman@rcat

Recovery Manager : Release 11.2.0.1.0 - Production on Jue Ago 22 13:51:27 2013

Copyright (c) 1982, 2009, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00554: fallo al inicializar el paquete del gestor de recuperación interno
RMAN-03000: fallo al inicializar el componente compilador del gestor de recuperación
RMAN-06035: versión incorrecta de recover.bsq; se esperaba 11.2.0.1 y se ha encontrado 11.2.0.3


It seems that I'd also need the recover.bsq file (which is in $ORACLE_HOME/ADMIN), but I want to be sure that I wont miss more files or face new problems when we'll have to perform a disaster recovery or something in the future.

What can I do?

How can I only install the different versions of RMAN client?
There's another method to centralize all the backups work (I think that EM Cloud Control can achieve this, I didn't read about it, just figuring out, but we dont want to rely on a GUI web-based application to manage our backup strategy.)

Regards
Forget copying binaries around. I would integrate remote RMAN executions into your normal backup application/solution (i.e. filesystem backup to fire a script) for the sake of consistency. Especially scheduling of backups would be easier.

Re: "In this case parameterfile.par must exist in SRV_PROD_1". Not a problem if you dig into RMAN's own CREATE SCRIPT syntax - you can store the run{ } script inside your catalog.

Re: "rman.log will be created also on SRV_PROD_1". Not a problem if you take a look at catalog schema contests - surely there is one large table per each catalog that holds the logs anyway (I can't remember if it's ROUT or RMAN_OUT?).