Yes and that is the way to effect an alternate host restore. I typically use the PARMS/ENV mechanism to emit the NB_ORA_CLIENT. What you refer to is active passive clusters, where you can float the VIP - essentially the database(instance) follows the VIP. This is documented in the Veritas/Symantec Support notes. That is not the case under RAC where instances don't follow the VIP. You can force connections through one VIP but then you have deal with capacity issues. While I have not tried this, you could effect the same behaviour with an application VIP, which, however, will not eliminate capacity issues. Under RAC I have used the auto locate capability to search a backup piece in multiple channels each of which is configured with a different client name; more flexible and consequently a tad more complicated to manage. I vaguely remember that under TSM you can emit a variable to direct the channel to a configuration file and perhaps that may be a way to effect the alternate host restore mechanism. Regards, -Krish Krish Hariharan President/Executive Architect, Quasar Database Technologies, LLC http://www.linkedin.com/in/quasardb -----Original Message----- From: D'Hooge Freek [mailto:Freek.DHooge@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 1:58 AM To: krish.hariharan@xxxxxxxxxxxx; pjhoraclel@xxxxxxxxx; 'oracle-l' Subject: RE: Questions on using RMAN to backup a RAC database with TSM Krish, Netbackup would normally allow you to override the node name by using the "send 'NB_ORA_CLIENT=name' " command. I have used this for a client who had a setup with sun cluster, and we used the cluster package name as client name. Maybe TSM has the same option? Regards, Freek D'Hooge Uptime Oracle Database Administrator email: freek.dhooge@xxxxxxxxx tel +32(0)3 451 23 82 http://www.uptime.be disclaimer -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l