Use the same instance number and the same SID when you create all application server instances on multiple cluster nodes - This guideline ensures ease of maintenance and ease of administration because you will only need to use one set of commands to maintain all application servers on multiple nodes.
Install the application servers locally on the cluster node instead of on a cluster file system - This guideline ensures that another application server does not overwrite the log/data/work/sec directory for the application server.
Ensure that the SAPSIDadm home directory resides on a cluster file system - This guideline enables you to maintain only one set of scripts for all application server instances that run on all nodes. However, if you have some application servers that need to be configured differently (for example, application servers with different profiles), install those application servers with different instance numbers, and then configure them in a separate resource group.
Place the application servers into multiple resource groups if you want to use RGOffload functionality to shut down one or more application servers when a higher priority resource is failing over - This guideline provides flexibility and availability if you want to use RGOffload functionality (a separate resource type) to offload one or more application servers for the database. The functionality you gain from this guideline supersedes the ease of use you gain from placing the application servers into one large group. See "Freeing Node Resources by Offloading Non-critical Resource Groups" on page 332 for more information on using the RGOffload resource type.