Total Connections is the number of database connections that have been created since the app server started. Connections are created lazily - none are made until the first connection request comes along at which time min connections are created. Therefore, you will see Total Connection set to 0 for a while, then when the first connection request comes along you should see Total Connection increase fairly quickly until it reaches min connections. So there is a window during which Total Connections could be less than min connections.