ORA-00245: control file backup failed | Oracle RAC | Solved

ORA-00245: control file backup failed; target is likely on a local file system

The Cause and Resolution to ORA-00245

ORA-00245 RMAN Backup Failure Oracle Errors

The issue is related to Oracle RAC Environment only as you'll not see this error in single instance environments. This error was occurred while taking the backup of controlfile via RMAN on a locally defined path. The same thing was working pretty well on the previous architecture that I had created but this time I created a new Environment and tried running the same script again, it worked fine for 2-3 days and then generated this error. Please see below the links to see the Scripts that I am using to take Level0 and Level1 Backups,

RMAN Script to take Level0 (L0) Backup - Full RMAN Backup Script
RMAN Script to take Level1 (L1) Backup - Incremental RMAN Backup Script

Below mentioned is the error I found in the output log generated by RMAN Backup:

RMAN-00571: ===========================================================
RMAN-00569: =============== ERROR MESSAGE STACK FOLLOWS ===============
RMAN-00571: ===========================================================

RMAN-03009: failure of backup command on ch2 channel at 07/26/2017 08:06:48
ORA-00245: control file backup failed; target is likely on a local file system

Recovery Manager complete.

More details regarding the same issue:

NODE2 :
*****************
Wed Jul 26 08:10:12 2017
Control file backup creation failed:
  failure to open backup target file /oracle/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/
dbs/snapcf_ndrerp1.f.
Errors in file /oracle/app/oracle/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1/log/diag/rdbms/ndrerp/
ndrerp2/trace/ndrerp2_arc7_17563736.trc:
ORA-27037: unable to obtain file status
IBM AIX RISC System/6000 Error: 2: No such file or directory
Additional information: 3
Wed Jul 26 08:42:11 2017
**********************
NODE1 :
****************
Wed Jul 26 08:06:46 2017
Errors in file /oracle/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/ndrerp/ndrerp1/trace/ndrerp1_ora_46
923936.trc:
ORA-00245: control file backup failed; target is likely on a local file system
Wed Jul 26 08:16:04 2017

Cause and Resolution:

As I had created the same paths on both the nodes which I was using to take out the backups, the only thing I was missing here was to make sure that the snapshot controlfile which is getting used to take the backup should also be shared between all the nodes. For more reference, please follow Doc ID 2105570.1

Also, in order to create the snapshot controlfile in shared location, please follow the below mentioned steps:

Configure the snapshot control file to a shared disk:

RMAN> CONFIGURE SNAPSHOT CONTROLFILE NAME TO '<shared_disk>/snapcf_<DBNAME>.f';

Or in case of ASM use

RMAN> CONFIGURE SNAPSHOT CONTROLFILE NAME TO '+<DiskGroup>/snapcf_<DBNAME>.f';

Just a glimpse from the Oracle Doc to make you understand the issue properly.

ORA-245 is raised if there were any errors during the controlfile backup operation, for example another session from other node is starting control file transaction to update some control file record while a Binary copy of the controlfile is been made from other node to local node.

This error is expected error with following justification

Due to the changes made to the controlfile backup mechanism in Rac from 11g any instances in the cluster may write to the backup controlfile when making changes to the current controlfile.
Therefore, the backup copy of controlfile needs to be visible to all instances.

The error would be reported only if any other instance is actively updating the current controlfile . So you would see this error intermittently

I hope this helps !!