This study investigates the influence of burner configuration on nonpremixed flameless combustion (FLC) of propane in a cylindrical furnace. Two nozzle patterns are adopted, i.e., a central fuel/oxidizer nozzle symmetrically with two oxidizer/fuel nozzles aside (OFO/FOF), whereas six values of the fuel-oxidizer nozzle separation S (1.1-14D(eq), where D-eq is the equivalent jet diameter) are considered. Both experiments and numerical simulations are conducted under varying global equivalence ratio Phi (0.6-1.0) and thermal input P-in (10 and 15 kW). The measurements are made of the mean temperatures in furnace and exhaust NOx emissions. While the experiments show different performances of FLC burners under various test conditions, the CFD simulations characterize corresponding combustion processes and explain experimental observations. Results demonstrate that, as Phi increases, the maximum temperature (T-max) and NO emission (E-NO) both reduce for all OFO and FOF cases but one exception of the OFO pattern at S = 1.1D(eq) (i.e., OFO-1.1); and hotspots are generated at low Phi <= 0.8. For the OFO-1.1 burner, no hotspots occur at any Phi and E-NO increases with increasing Phi, like the premixed counterpart. Moreover, for all the test burners, T-max and thus E-NO reduces as S is either increased or decreased from around S = 6D(eq). In general, the preferable configuration for the nonpremixed FLC burner should be such that integrates a central fuel nozzle with two or more oxidizer nozzles distributed uniformly, where the fuel-oxidizer nozzles should be separated by a distance as small as possible.