Oracle Clusterware provides a complete, integrated clusterware management solution on all Oracle Database platforms. This clusterware functionality provides all of the features required to manage your cluster database including node membership, group services, global resource management, and high availability functions.
You can install Oracle Clusterware independently or as a prerequisite to the Oracle RAC installation process. Oracle Database features, such as services, use the underlying Oracle Clusterware mechanisms to provide advanced capabilities. Oracle Database also continues to support select third-party clusterware products on specified platforms.
Oracle Clusterware is designed for, and tightly integrated with, Oracle RAC. You can use Oracle Clusterware to manage high-availability operations in a cluster. When you create an Oracle RAC database using any of the management tools, the database is registered with and managed by Oracle Clusterware, along with the other required components such as the VIP address, the Single Client Access Name (SCAN) (which includes the SCAN VIPs and the SCAN listener), Oracle Notification Service, and the Oracle Net listeners. These resources are automatically started when the node starts and automatically restart if they fail. The Oracle Clusterware daemons run on each node.
Anything that Oracle Clusterware manages is known as a CRS resource. A CRS resource can be a database, an instance, a service, a listener, a VIP address, or an application process. Oracle Clusterware manages CRS resources based on the resource's configuration information that is stored in the Oracle Cluster Registry (OCR). You can use SRVCTL commands to administer any Oracle-defined CRS resources. Oracle Clusterware provides the framework that enables you to create CRS resources to manage any process running on servers in the cluster which are not predefined by Oracle. Oracle Clusterware stores the information that describes the configuration of these components in OCR that you can administer as described in the Oracle Clusterware Administration and Deployment Guide.