an update...i tried using the MaximumSize and strictMaximumSize settings in my ejb's jboss.xml file. i added the following content:

<container-configurations>
<container-configuration extends="Standard Stateless SessionBean">
<container-name>My Stateless SessionBean</container-name>
<container-pool-conf>
1 true
</container-pool-conf>
</container-configuration>
</container-configurations>

i also associated my SLSB with this configuration via a

<configuration-name>My Stateless SessionBean</configuration-name>

entry below the ejb-name tag of my session bean.

this setting does not appear to have an effect on the number of concurrent invocations of the SLSB (perhaps i misunderstand the documentation on MaximumSize and it's not supposed to). i notice that regardless of whether i

1) do a full lookup/narrow/create of the EJB in each thread
2) share the EJB remote reference across threads
3) share the EJB home reference across threads, and have each thread do a create() to get the remote reference

i'm able to do much more than MaximumSize concurrent invocations of the SLSB method. basically, the behavior i see is the same i'd see if i did not set MaximumSize.

any ideas?