Kemp | Glossary of Terms and Phrases

In IT, a Pool defines a group of systems that work together to deliver services and applications as a group. The term Farm is often used interchangeably with Pool. The most common type of Pool is a Server Pool in which two or more servers are configured to deliver a standard set of services and applications to end users. In most cases client requests to a pool are handled by intermediate load balancers that maintain a view of the nodes of the pool and can allocate client requests to the most suitable node based on various metrics such as server and network load, server and network health, request type, and more. Pools are increasingly delivering other IT functions beyond servers as Software Defined Networking and other software provided IT functions become more common.