---
title: Five Best Practices for Setting Dispatchers on Shared Connections | Official Pythian®® Blog
description: In this post, Matheus Boesing presents five best practices/tips for setting dispatchers on a database resident connection pool (DRCP).
---

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# [Five Best Practices for Setting Dispatchers on Shared Connections | Official Pythian®® Blog](https://www.pythian.com/blog/five-best-practices-for-setting-dispatchers-on-sharedconnections)

 Written by [Matheus Boesing](https://www.pythian.com/blog/author/matheus-boesing) | Mar 15, 2021 4:00:00 AM

In this post I’d like to present five best practices/tips for setting dispatchers for database shared connections:

## 1. Set local_listener on both instances of the database

alter system set LOCAL_LISTENER=”(address=(protocol=tcp)(port=1521)(host=yourhost))” scope=both sid=’instance_name’;  
Ref: *Shared Server: Dispatchers Are Not Registered With Listener (Doc ID 465881.1)*

## 2. Dispatchers parameter should be set to utilize the VIP name of the host

alter system set dispatchers='(address=(protocol=tcp)(host=node1-vip))(dispatchers=2)’ scope=both sid=’instance_name’;  
Ref: *How To Configure Shared Server Dispatchers For RAC Environment (Doc ID 578524.1)*

## 3. Set dispatchers count appropriately considering the number of sessions expected to connect to the [database](https://pythian.com/databases/database-consulting/)

A general rule of thumb is that one dispatcher can handle 50 shared server connections with minimal performance impact.  
Ref: *Shared Server Only: TNS-12518, TNS-12564 and TNS-12602 Errors at Connect Time (Doc ID 1539104.1)*

## 4. You can use arguments with the dispatchers parameter for closer control of how the shared server sessions are used

SESSIONS: Determines the max sessions allowed for each dispatcher.  
CONNECTIONS: The maximum number of network connections to allow for each dispatcher.  
Ref: [https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/19/refrn/DISPATCHERS.html#GUID-DCBCCF94-8A73-4805-9138-412DA413FC7C](https://docs.oracle.com/en/database/oracle/oracle-database/19/refrn/DISPATCHERS.html#GUID-DCBCCF94-8A73-4805-9138-412DA413FC7C)

## 5. Set shared_servers parameter to control the total number of shared servers spawned by the database

shared_servers set to 1 –> This will enable shared server sessions on the database.  
max_shared_servers  –> Specifies the maximum number of shared servers that can run simultaneously.  
shared_server_sessions  –> Specifies the total number of shared server user sessions that can run simultaneously. Setting this parameter enables to reserve user sessions for dedicated servers.  
Ref: *Automatic Shared Server Configuration (Doc ID 265931.1)*

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any questions or thoughts, please leave them in the comments. See you next post!

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