The .NET Connection Pool Lifeguard

Prevent pool overflows that can drown your applications
: "you need to know about many scalability and performance details when you use connection pooling. Remember that you need to monitor and manage two essential factors: the number of connections each pool manages and the number of connection pools. In an efficient production system, typically the number of pools is low (1 to 10) and the total number of connections in use is also low (fewer than 12). An efficient query takes less than a second to complete and disconnect. So even if hundreds of customers are accessing your Web site simultaneously, relatively few connections can often handle the entire load. To make your applications run efficiently, you must keep connection resources under control and monitor your pools' status so that you'll have some warning before they overflow and your customers start to complain—or go elsewhere."