What is RMAN in oracle database

Oracle Recovery Manager ( RMAN) is the core oracle database server software component that manages database backup, restore, recovery process and helps you to automate your administration of backup strategy.

A  DBA  can use RMAN to specify files  or archive logs to be backed up using the RMAN BACKUP command. Doing so causes RMAN to create a backup set as output. A backup set is one or more data files, control files, or archived redo logs that are written by RMAN in proprietary format.

RMAN accesses backup and recovery information from either the control file or the optional recovery catalog.