If multiple containers are hosting the same CMP Bean, Option A will break if used in a round-robin load-balancing technique. Currently, it is pretty much an either-or choice between:

• A single container can have exclusive access to the database (or more precisely, exlusive access with respect to the entity bean's table in the database) and you can use Options A.
• Multiple replicated containers can have non-exclusive access to the database (for example, to tables) and you can use Options B and C only. In this scenario, round robin load-balancing works great.

Given our current design, there is no way to support both exclusive access and failover simultaneously. This really boils down to an issue with the Smart Agent, which doesn't distinguish between round-robin for performance and failover for availability.