Serviceguard and Oracle 10g EM agent setup

[Rodney Thorstrom]

We are in the process of setting up an HP Serviceguard cluster for some of our 10g Oracle databases. Our initial tests are very promising and we are wondering what the best way would be to set up the 10g Oracle Enterprise Manager (Grid Control) agents. Initially, we installed the agent and made it part of the package but, once the package failed over to the new node, the agent would not talk to the Oracle OMS process. After some reading I discovered that I should have installed the agent using the ip address assigned to the package. With this in mind I have the following questions:

1. I was wondering what experiences others have had with setting up Serviceguard clusters for Oracle databases and using Oracle the Enterprise Manager to manage/monitor the databases.

2. How much of a performance hit do you experience if you have multiple packages (i.e. 3 or 4), each containing a database and an agent? (Note: This is how the 10g Release 4 Oracle Enterprise Manager Advanced Configuration manual tells you to set up the agents.)

3. Is there a better way to set up the Oracle EM agents, other than the way Oracle recommends in the EM Advance Configuration manual?