You’re right that MID Server Cluster configuration alone is sufficient for ServiceNow to perform load-balancing and failover of jobs — that’s handled by the Business Rule: “MID Server Cluster Management”, which automatically re-routes work when one node in the cluster goes down.

But in a real-world production setup, relying only on cluster logic without health/heartbeat monitoring is risky:

Failover Logic: Yes, ServiceNow will shift jobs to another MID in the same cluster when one goes Down. No manual heartbeat config is needed for this — it’s built-in.

Operational Monitoring: However, heartbeat status is the only visibility admins have into whether a MID is healthy. Without monitoring alerts, you might not even know a node is dead until jobs start failing or users complain.

That’s why I suggested both — cluster config for HA and heartbeat alerts for operational assurance.