Whether to go for 4 node RAC or 5 node RAC (with 1 spare node)

Hi,

We have a 2 node production cluster with 12 CPU cores on each node. We want to add some more databases to the cluster. We have got approval to purchase RAC DB licenses for 24 more cores and non RAC DB licenses for 24 cores. We have two options as follows:

1) Add just one node to the cluster with 24 cores and move some DBs to cluster. And keep one standalone server with 24 cores running remaining databases on it. All our licenses will be utilized with this approach. And we can add the standalone node to the cluster next year when we get more RAC licenses.