This statement is not a prerequisite for patching Grid Infrastructure or database homes when using the console. According to the Oracle documentation8, “Before you patch Grid Infrastructure or database homes, ensure that the following prerequisites are met: All database compute nodes of the VM cluster are up and running. The /u01 directory on the database host file system has at least 15 GB of free space for the execution of patching processes. The required patch is available on the Control Plane server.” This means that Oracle Clusterware must be up and running on the VM cluster before patching, not down.