Which database version can be used with Grid Infrastructure 19c?

This will be a very short blog post today. But a colleague asked me this question just a few minutes ago: Which database version can be used with Grid Infrastructure 19c? And I realized that I neither put it on the blog yet nor did I bookmark it. But I answered this question several times already.

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Which database version can be used with Grid Infrastructure 19c?

There are 4 sources I did check:

• MOS Notes on MyOracle Support
• Oracle Documentation
• Certification Information on MyOracle Support
• Database Upgrade Blog

At first, I answered with MOS Note: 337737.1 – Oracle Clusterware (CRS/GI) – ASM – Database Version Compatibility, especially as the title of the note sounds like it would exactly answer the question.

But in this case, the colleague read the note carefully and replied:

“Fine – that’s for ASM only!”

And he is correct – MOS Note: 337737.1 says clearly: “This MOS note is only for ASM compatibility.”

I must have overlooked this detail. And even though I could argue with “you need to put your database into ASM anyway, and hence it does apply to the database as well as there is a column for DATABASE in the matrix”, I remembered that it is in the documentation as well.

The Grid Infrastructure Installation and Upgrade Guide has this information:

You can use Oracle Database 19c, 18c, Oracle Database 12c releases 1 and 2, and Oracle Database 11g release 2 (11.2.0.3 or later) with Oracle Grid Infrastructure 19c.

The Certification Information on MOS by the way does not provide this – and it isn’t intended to.

Annotation:
As my colleague Davide mailed me on right after the blog post, 11.2.0.3 is obviously not certified with OL7/RHEL7. Hence, I can’t tell you how realistic it is to have an 11.2.0.3 database in ASM 19c. Maybe this is possible on SLES. So be aware about this fuzziness.

And needless to say that you should upgrade your database(s) to Oracle 19c. But in case you’d like to mix different RU levels than, please read this blog post as well: Does your GI patch level need to match your database’s patch level?

Further Information and Links

• MOS Note: 337737.1 – Oracle Clusterware (CRS/GI) – ASM – Database Version Compatibility
• Upgrade Blog: Does your GI patch level need to match your database’s patch level?
• Oracle 19c Grid Infrastructure Installation and Upgrade Guide for Linux – Database Certification

–Mike