Oracle Database 11g Release 2 introduces the Oracle Grid Infrastructure. For clusters, Oracle have combined the binaries for Oracle Clusterware and Automatic Storage Management to a single home, which is referred to as the grid infrastructure home (grid_home).
For standalone servers running single instance Oracle database with ASM, you will need to install the Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone Server. This home will contain Automatic Storage Management and a new feature called Oracle Restart. Oracle Restart includes the Oracle High Availability Services daemon, which will automatically start your Oracle resources (i.e. database, ASM, listener) when the server starts, monitor the resources and restart them if they fail, and stop them with the server is shutdown. To install the Grid Infrastructure for a standalone server , you must start the installer from the clusterware directory on the distribution media.
For standalone servers running single instance Oracle database with ASM, you will need to install the Grid Infrastructure for a Standalone Server. This home will contain Automatic Storage Management and a new feature called Oracle Restart. Oracle Restart includes the Oracle High Availability Services daemon, which will automatically start your Oracle resources (i.e. database, ASM, listener) when the server starts, monitor the resources and restart them if they fail, and stop them with the server is shutdown. To install the Grid Infrastructure for a standalone server , you must start the installer from the clusterware directory on the distribution media.