title: What is the best maximum connections setting for MySQL when using c3p0 connection pooling
body: <p>To being the question, I will describe our current production environment.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Each client gets a deployment of our Spring/Hibernate application</li>
  <li>Each deployment gets it's own database.</li>
  <li>There are upwards of 300 clients on our server now</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I have configured c3p0 with a minimum connection pool size of 1 with an increment value of 3 and a maximum of 20 connections.  So my question is, what should my maximum connections to MySQL be?  Should it be the max pool size times the number of clients (20 * 300 = 6000)?  Or should it be less?  Will an error occur if c3p0 has say, 3 connections already and tries to obtain another and MySQL is at it's max?</p>
  
  <p>I do not think that all clients will need their maximum number all at the same time, but I do want to prevent any errors from happening if a fringe case occurs.</p>