A10 FlexPool is A10 Networks’ capacity pool licence. A10 describes it as consumption-based licensing that “enables organizations to dynamically allocate and redistribute software capacity” across virtual, bare metal, private cloud and public cloud environments, as an alternative to licences tied to fixed deployments.[1] It works together with the Global License Manager (GLM), which handles licence generation, dynamic allocation and usage monitoring.[2] The original data sheet, dated November 2017, says FlexPool was available from ACOS release 4.1.1 P4; the current licensing page extends it to hardware platforms, containers and A10 Control.[2][1]
What is sold
The FlexPool page gives the commercial shape: a shared floating capacity pool of 10G, 20G, 50G, 100G, 150G, 270G or custom size; 3-year and 5-year subscription options with co-term capabilities; an Enterprise License Agreement option; and a single consolidated licence that aggregates capacity across hardware and software form factors on an expandable pay-as-you-grow basis.[1] The 2017 data sheet listed 10G, 50G and 100G standard pools, 1-year and 3-year subscriptions and Gold Support included; the later page shows that sizes and terms have changed, so the current page and the Order prevail.[2][1] Pools may be aggregated in any combination for expanded capacity according to the data sheet.[2]
FlexPool is offered in three deployment models:
- Single pool: an enterprise-wide shared pool with centralised capacity management across distributed environments.
- Multi-pool: dedicated pools for specific sites, business units or environments.
- Instance pool: a shared pool for deploying fixed-size instances across physical, virtual and cloud environments.[1]
For an asset manager the pool model decides the boundary of fungibility: capacity can move freely inside a pool but not across pools. Where a customer holds several pools, the Order and the GLM account structure show which devices may draw from which pool.
Supported products and infrastructure
FlexPool is a capacity pool licence for A10 software, including virtual and bare metal versions of A10 Control, Thunder ADC, Thunder CFW and Thunder CGN. The page says it supports hypervisors including VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V and KVM, private clouds using OpenStack and VMware vRO, and public clouds on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.[1] The Thunder ADC data sheet lists FlexPool as a licence for the vThunder, cloud marketplace, container and bare metal forms; on bare metal, FlexPool is limited to up to 60 Gbps per Thunder ADC, and for Thunder CGN bare metal up to 100 Gbps per instance.[3][4] The CFW data sheet lists FlexPool for both the CFW-ADC and CFW-CGN vThunder models.[5] Thunder CFW also keeps an all-in-one package for previous-generation platforms that do not support modular licensing.[1]
ACOS 7.0.3 (May 2026) added more Thunder hardware models to Capacity FlexPool and introduced bandwidth-to-core mapping for modular platforms with bandwidth tiers. The release document lists minimum and maximum pooled bandwidth for those platforms, for example Thunder 1060(S) 10G to 40G, Thunder 3350(S) 40G to 70G, Thunder 5960 100G to 300G, Thunder 7460(S) 150G to 250G and Thunder 7460(S-MAX) 250G to 270G.[6] Bandwidth changes within a tier are applied without a reboot, whereas changes across a tier boundary require a reboot after user approval.[6]
How capacity is counted
The 2017 data sheet states that FlexPool instances can be provisioned from 25 Mbps up to 40 Gbps in 1 Mbps increments, that A10 Application Delivery Partitions allow an instance to be segmented in up to 32 independent domains, and that “there is no enforced cap” on the number of instances associated with each pool.[2] Individual instance capacities can be expanded dynamically while unused capacity is returned to the pool.[2] Nodes are not locked: only the central pool is licensed and its bandwidth is allocated among appliances without additional licences. Licences can be checked out and back in manually or automatically, and the same activation and expiration dates apply to every instance in the pool.[2] The vThunder installation guide confirms that the capacity pool licence is not node-locked and that multiple ACOS devices can share bandwidth from the common pool, with an optional automatic renewal before expiry.[7]
The counting rule is therefore the sum of bandwidth allocated to registered devices against the pool size, per pool. Hardware platforms add a minimum bandwidth below which a pooled device is not allowed to be sized, and ACOS 7.0.3 sends device details (maximum, control and current CPUs and the minimum bandwidth) to A10 Control at registration.[6] The GLM dashboard is described as providing usage monitoring, analytics and audit trails, with device-level visibility into usage levels, activated instances and software versions.[2]
The Global License Manager and A10 Control
The GLM is “the master licensing system” for A10 Networks, hosted by A10 as a cloud service, with a portal at glm.a10networks.com; a GLM account is optional for basic licensing but is needed for advanced functions and usage monitoring.[7][2] FlexPool now integrates with A10 Control to provide centralised visibility into licences, devices and capacity usage, dynamic allocation of capacity levels, and simplified entitlement updates and audit tracking.[1] Licence guides for the GLM and Capacity FlexPool are published in the A10 documentation portal behind a sign-in, so their detailed procedures are outside the scope of this page.[7]
Support and warranty
The FlexPool data sheet from 2017 states that maintenance and support were included in the subscription model.[2] The current maintenance programs page states that cloud-hosted software solutions with no hardware, such as FlexPool and A10 Control, do not include the 90-day Standard Warranty.[8]
Evaluation
A free 30-day trial for FlexPool is offered on the licensing page, and the terms of use treat any trial as limited to a non-production environment for a Trial Term not exceeding 90 days unless otherwise agreed in writing.[1][9]
Out of scope
This article does not cover the sign-in-only GLM User Guide and Capacity FlexPool License guide, A10 pricing, or the resale of FlexPool capacity, which the standard terms bar by limiting purchases to the customer’s internal use.[10]