Oracle Autonomous AI Database Serverless (ADB-S) continues to make it easier and more cost-effective to manage diverse data workloads. Building on the success of Elastic Pools, we’re excited to introduce a new path to save costs and have more control over patching for your Autonomous AI Databases: Dedicated Elastic Pools.
This post will highlight what Dedicated Elastic Pools are, how they compare to Elastic Pools, the unique benefits they bring to your Autonomous AI Database deployments, and common use cases.
What Are Dedicated Elastic Pools?
Similar to elastic pools, Dedicated Elastic Pools allow you to group multiple Autonomous AI Database instances into a unified “family plan”, designed to simplify resource management and billing while offering greater flexibility around patching. The defining characteristic of dedicated elastic pools is that all member instances are provisioned on the same infrastructure dedicated to you, enhancing control and operational consistency.
Key Features of Dedicated Elastic Pools:
- Dedicated Environment: All pooled database instances operate within the same infrastructure dedicated to you, managed as a unified resource set.
- Custom Maintenance Windows: Set your preferred day and 2-hour window for automatic patching and updates, ensuring maintenance aligns with your business needs.
- Patching Flexibility: Pause patching for up to 4 weeks for the entire pool—offering you maximum control and minimizing impact on mission-critical workloads.
- Unified Billing: Both compute and storage are billed at the pool level, offering simplified cost management.
- Flexible Pool Sizing: Select a pool shape to match your anticipated workloads; easily scale with your choice of ECPUs and storage.
- Burst Capability: Provision up to 4x your pool’s base ECPU count. (E.g., a 256 ECPU pool can provision up to 1024 ECPUs across pooled databases.)
- High Instance Density: Effectively group hundreds or thousands of Autonomous AI Databases into a single dedicated elastic pool.
What’s New in Dedicated Elastic Pools vs. Elastic Pools?
Dedicated Elastic Pools build upon elastic pools, with important differentiators:
| FEATURE | ELASTIC POOLS | DEDICATED ELASTIC POOLS |
|---|---|---|
| Billing Model | Pool level (compute only) | Pool level (compute and storage) |
| Custom Maintenance Window | Not available | Yes, user-defined |
| Patching Pause | Not available | Yes, up to 4 weeks |
Key Benefits of Dedicated Elastic Pools
1. Maintenance and Patch Management Flexibility
- Custom Maintenance Windows: Choose the exact day and 2-hour window that works best for your patching schedule.
- Patch Pause Option: Defer patching for up to 4 weeks for the entire pool—the greatest degree of flexibility offered in patch management for ADB-S.
- These unique options make dedicated elastic pools ideal for customers with critical workloads or regulatory requirements around patching timelines and maintenance control.
2. Significant Cost Savings
- Up to 87% Savings compared to per-instance billing, through efficient resource pooling and right-sizing.
- Lower Entry Point: Allocate as little as 1 ECPU per database.
- Dynamic Allocation: Easily distribute more ECPUs to busier databases without the overhead of paying for excess, under-utilized capacity.
3. Simplified, Predictable Billing
- Pool-level Charges: Both compute and storage are billed at the pool level — no need to manage compute and storage charges individually for each instance.
- Resource Flexibility: Adjust ECPU allocations per instance for optimized IO and memory—all without incurring unpredictable costs for each pool member.
- Right-sized Environments: Adapt easily to changes in usage patterns or consolidation needs.
When to Choose Dedicated Elastic Pools
The use cases for dedicated elastic pools closely match those for elastic pools:
1. Migrating Oversubscribed On-Premises Databases
If you currently operate an on-premises (or alternative platform) environment where dozens or hundreds of databases are oversubscribed on a single server, dedicated elastic pools make it easy to lift and shift without losing the cost efficiency of that model.
- Example: Suppose your data center runs 400 databases on a 128-core physical server by oversubscribing resources to keep costs down. With dedicated elastic pools, you can mirror this approach in the cloud: simply create a pool (e.g., 256 ECPUs) and provision your migrated databases with individual ECPU allocations that can collectively burst up to 1024 ECPUs as needed. This way, you maintain your on-premises cost profile while gaining cloud agility.
2. Migrating a Large Number of Very Small Databases
Organizations adopting microservices architectures often need to move dozens—or hundreds—of very small databases to the cloud.
- Example: If you are an enterprise with a microservices-based application, each service may require its own database. Dedicated elastic pools allow you to manage and optimize these many small databases in a single, cost-effective pool, instead of incurring overhead for each database separately. This significantly reduces administrative complexity and maximizes utilization.
3. SaaS Providers Managing Multi-Tenant Environments
Independent software vendors (ISVs) and SaaS providers commonly deploy separate databases for each customer, resulting in potentially thousands of databases that must be managed efficiently. Dedicated elastic pools, similar to elastic pools, let you group all these customer databases in a single pool, maximizing cost savings, simplifying management, and enabling uniform maintenance scheduling—while retaining the flexibility to right-size each database as tenant workloads change.
The key differentiator? If your workloads demand enhanced flexibility around patching—whether to meet business, compliance, or operational needs—dedicated elastic pools give you advanced options to schedule and defer maintenance with greater precision and control.
Get Started
Dedicated Elastic Pools are now available in Autonomous AI Database Serverless. To learn more, visit the Autonomous AI Database documentation.