Which client are you using? We have seen that a browser typically doesn't send more than 2 requests (even if you have multiple tabs) if the requests are going to the same URL.
In other words the client may not be actually making 20 or 30 requests concurrently.
One way to test this is to write a simple java program that talks directly to the beans. You will see that the appserver indeed creates upto max-pool-size beans.
Thanks.
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