You can install different releases of Oracle Clusterware, Oracle ASM, and Oracle Database on your cluster. Follow these guidelines when installing different releases of software on your cluster:
You can only have one installation of Oracle Clusterware running in a cluster, and it must be installed into its own home (Grid_home). The release of Oracle Clusterware that you use must be equal to or higher than the Oracle ASM and Oracle RAC versions that run in the cluster. You cannot install a version of Oracle RAC that was released after the version of Oracle Clusterware that you run on the cluster. In other words:
Oracle Clusterware 12c supports Oracle ASM 12c only, because Oracle ASM is in the Oracle Grid Infrastructure home, which also includes Oracle Clusterware
Oracle Clusterware 12c supports Oracle Database 12c, Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2) and 11g release 1 (11.1), and Oracle Database 10g release 2 (10.2) and 10g release 1 (10.1)
Oracle ASM 12c requires Oracle Clusterware 12c and supports Oracle Database 12c, Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2), Oracle Database 11g release 1 (11.1), Oracle Database 10g release 2 (10.2), and 10g release 1 (10.1)
Oracle Database 12c requires Oracle Clusterware 12c
For example:
If you have Oracle Clusterware 12c installed as your clusterware, then you can have an Oracle Database 10g release 1 (10.1) single-instance database running on one node, and separate Oracle Real Application Clusters 10g release 1 (10.1), 10g release 2 (10.2), and Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g release 1 (11.1) databases also running on the cluster. However, you cannot have Oracle Clusterware 10g release 2 (10.2) installed on your cluster, and install Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g. You can install Oracle Database 11g single-instance on a node in an Oracle Clusterware 10g release 2 (10.2) cluster.
When using different Oracle ASM and Oracle Database releases, the functionality of each depends on the functionality of the earlier software release. Thus, if you install Oracle Clusterware 11g and you later configure Oracle ASM, and you use Oracle Clusterware to support an existing Oracle Database 10g release 2 (10.2.0.3) installation, then the Oracle ASM functionality is equivalent only to that available in the 10g release 2 (10.2.0.3) release version. Set the compatible attributes of a disk group to the appropriate release of software in use.
See Also:
Oracle Automatic Storage Management Administrator's Guide for information about compatible attributes of disk groups
There can be multiple Oracle homes for the Oracle database (both single instance and Oracle RAC) in the cluster. The Oracle homes for all nodes of an Oracle RAC database must be the same.
You can use different users for the Oracle Clusterware and Oracle database homes if they belong to the same primary group.
As of Oracle Clusterware 12c, there can only be one installation of Oracle ASM running in a cluster. Oracle ASM is always the same version as Oracle Clusterware, which must be the same (or higher) release than that of the Oracle database.
For Oracle RAC running Oracle9i you must run an Oracle9i cluster. For UNIX systems, that is HACMP, Serviceguard, Sun Cluster, or Veritas SF. For Windows and Linux systems, that is the Oracle Cluster Manager. To install Oracle RAC 10g, you must also install Oracle Clusterware.
Oracle recommends that you do not run different cluster software on the same servers unless they are certified to work together. However, if you are adding Oracle RAC to servers that are part of a cluster, either migrate to Oracle Clusterware or ensure that:
The clusterware you run is supported to run with Oracle RAC 12c.
You have installed the correct options for Oracle Clusterware and the other vendor clusterware to work together.
See Also:
Oracle Grid Infrastructure Installation Guide for more version compatibility information