About Dedicated Elastic Pools

Autonomous AI Database lets you create elastic pools with all pool members and the pool leader located in the same infrastructure. These are called dedicated elastic pools.

With the pool leader and pool members physically co-located, dedicated elastic pools provide additional options as listed below. These benefits make dedicated elastic pools suitable for SaaS applications, microservices, or workloads with huge number of relatively smaller databases.

In addition to the benefits of elastic pools listed in About Elastic Pools, dedicated elastic pools provide:

• Improved control over Database, ORDS, and APEX patches.

• Simplified storage billing.

Dedicated Elastic Pool Requirements

To create a dedicated elastic pool and become a pool leader, an Autonomous AI Database instance must:

• Use the ECPU compute model.

• Have compute and storage auto scaling disabled.

• Not be a member of an existing elastic pool.

• Have sufficient number of ECPUs and storage available, below the tenancy limit, to accommodate the elastic pool's compute and storage size.

  The supported pool shapes for a dedicated elastic pool are:

  • For 256 TB storage, the only available pool compute size is 256 ECPUs.

  • For 512 TB storage, the available pool compute sizes are 256 ECPUs and 512 ECPUs.

  • For 1024 TB storage, the available pool compute sizes are 256 ECPUs, 512 ECPUs, and 1024 ECPUs.

• Provisioning a pool leader is subject to service limits enforced at the tenancy level.

The maximum allowed individual ECPU count for an Autonomous AI Database instance that creates an elastic pool is four (4) times the pool size specified while creating the pool.

To join a dedicated elastic pool, an Autonomous AI Database must:

• Use the ECPU compute model.

• Have compute and storage auto scaling disabled.

• Not be a member of an elastic pool.

• Have an ECPU count below the available pool capacity.

• Provisioning a pool member is subject to the available pool compute and storage capacity.

How Dedicated Elastic Pools Affect Standard Management Operations

• Billing: Oracle bills each dedicated pool hourly for provisioned storage, in addition to compute billing. Billing starts when you create the pool and ends when you terminate it. Oracle bills each dedicated pool hourly for provisioned storage, in addition to compute billing. Billing starts when you create the pool and ends when you terminate it. Pool members continue to have their own storage allocation, but they are not billed for storage individually, unlike traditional elastic pools.

  For example, in a dedicated elastic pool with 256 TB and 256 ECPUs, the pool leader will be billed for both storage and compute on an hourly basis. See About Autonomous AI Database Dedicated Elastic Pool Billing andAbout Billing Autonomous AI Database Dedicated Elastic Pools with Autonomous Data Guard for details.

• Autonomous Data Guard: You can enable Autonomous Data Guard on a dedicated elastic pool, provided another dedicated elastic pool is available either in the same region (for local Autonomous Data Guard peer) or in a remote region (for cross region Autonomous Data Guard peer).

• Maintenance and Patching:

  • You can choose your preferred maintenance window (day and time) while creating or enabling a dedicated elastic pool. The selected maintenance window applies to all the patchable components in the pool.

  • Only the pool leader can control patching (pause or resume).

  • Pausing or resuming maintenance for a dedicated elastic pool will also pause or resume maintenance for all other dedicated elastic pools in the same region.

  • If a dedicated elastic pool already exists in a specific region of your tenancy, any additional dedicated elastic pools you create in the same region and tenancy cannot have custom maintenance windows. Instead, these pools automatically inherit the maintenance window of the first dedicated elastic pool created in that region and tenancy. This restriction does not apply if you create a dedicated elastic pool in a different region within your tenancy or in a different tenancy within the same region.

  • Except for security patches, you can pause and resume maintenance for a dedicated elastic pool multiple times, but each dedicated elastic pool must receive a patch at least once every 30 days (4 weeks). Maintenance cannot be deferred beyond this period.

  • You can resume a previously paused patching for a dedicated elastic pool, at any time from the OCI console. Once resumed, the subsequent patching occurs in your scheduled window.

  • You cannot modify the pool storage (TB) will when a dedicated elastic pool's patching is paused.

• Scaling Pool Storage (TB): Unlike traditional elastic pools that allow the pool leader only to change the pool ECPU count, dedicated elastic pools allow you to change the pool storage (TB) along with its compute size (ECPUs).

  Changing Pool storage (TB) requires that:

  • The new value of Pool storage (TB) is not greater than the storage already used by the pool members, while scaling down.

  • The new value of Pool storage (TB) is within the tenancy limits.

  • The dedicated elastic pool's patching is not in a paused state.

• Database Provisioning: When you create a dedicated elastic pool while provisioning or cloning an Autonomous AI Database instance, the database instance remains in the provisioning state until the dedicated elastic pool is assigned a dedicated server.

Dedicated Elastic Pool Operations

Tip:

In addition to the pool leader and member operations listed in Elastic Pool Operations, a dedicated elastic pool leader can perform the following operations specifically on Dedicated elastic pools.

You can perform the following operations on a dedicated elastic pool only as the pool leader:

Operation	Description
Enable a dedicated elastic pool	A pool leader can convert an existing elastic pool into a dedicated elastic pool. All the pool members will be moved to a dedicated infrastructure during the next maintenance window. See Enable a Dedicated Elastic Pool for more information.
Create a dedicated elastic pool while provisioning or cloning an Autonomous AI Database	See Create a Dedicated Elastic Pool While Provisioning or Cloning an Instance for instructions.
Create a dedicated elastic pool using an existing Autonomous AI Database	See Create a Dedicated Elastic Pool for instructions.
Modify dedicated elastic pool storage (TB)	Pool leader of a dedicated elastic pool can change the pool storage (TB), provided it is withing the tenancy limits. See Change a Dedicated Elastic Pool Storage for more information.
Pause or resume dedicated elastic pool patching	A dedicated elastic pool leader can pause or resume pool’s patching. See Manage Dedicated Elastic Pool Patching for more information.
Disable a dedicated elastic pool	A dedicated elastic pool leader can convert it into a traditional elastic pool by disabling it. See Disable a Dedicated Elastic Pool for more information.