Topic

Configuration Maximums
VMware vSphere 4.1
Whenyouselectandconfigureyourvirtualandphysicalequipment,youmuststayatorbelowthemaximums supportedbyvSphere4.1.Thelimitspresentedinthefollowingtablesrepresenttested,recommendedlimits, andtheyarefullysupportedbyVMware.

VirtualMachineMaximumsonpage 1 ESXHostMaximumsonpage 2 vCenterServerMaximumsonpage 6 vCenterServerExtensionsonpage 6

Thelimitspresentedinthisdocumentcanbeaffectedbyotherfactors,suchashardwaredependencies.For moreinformationaboutsupportedhardware,seetheappropriateESXhardwarecompatibilityguide.Consult individualsolutionlimitstoensurethatyoudonotexceedsupportedconfigurationsforyourenvironment. TheConfigurationMaximumsforvSphere4.1coversESX,ESXi,andvCenterServer.

Virtual Machine Maximums

Table 1containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtovirtualmachines. Table 1. Virtual Machine Maximums
Item Compute VirtualCPUspervirtualmachine(VirtualSMP) Memory RAMpervirtualmachine Virtualmachineswapfilesize Storage Virtual Adapters and Devices VirtualSCSIadapterspervirtualmachine VirtualSCSItargetspervirtualSCSIadapter VirtualSCSItargetspervirtualmachine Disksize IDEcontrollerspervirtualmachine IDEdevicespervirtualmachine Floppycontrollerspervirtualmachine Floppydevicespervirtualmachine Networking Virtual Devices VirtualNICspervirtualmachine Virtual Peripheral Ports USBcontrollerspervirtualmachine 1 10 41 152 60 2TBminus512 bytes 13 4 1 2 255GB 255GB 8 Maximum

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Configuration Maximums

Table 1. Virtual Machine Maximums (Continued)

Item USBdevicesconnectedtoavirtualmachine Parallelportspervirtualmachine Serialportspervirtualmachine Miscellaneous Concurrentremoteconsoleconnectionstoavirtualmachine 40 Maximum 20 3 4

1. AnycombinationofsupportedSCSIvirtualstoragecontrollers.FourParavirtualSCSIadapters maybeusedonlyifthevirtualmachinebootsfromadeviceattachedtoanIDEcontroller,orfrom thenetwork. 2. Anycombinationofdisk,CDROMorVMDirectPathSCSItarget. 3. Supportstwochannels(primaryandsecondary)eachwithamasterandslavedevice.

ESX Host Maximums

ThefollowingtablescontainconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhosts.

ComputeMaximumsonpage 2 MemoryMaximumsonpage 3 StorageMaximumsonpage 3 NetworkingMaximumsonpage 4 ResourcePoolandClusterMaximumsonpage 5

Compute Maximums
Table 2containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostcomputeresources. Table 2. Compute Maximums
Item Host CPU maximums LogicalCPUsperhost Virtual machine maximums Virtualmachinesperhost VirtualCPUsperhost VirtualCPUspercore Fault Tolerance maximums Virtualdisks VirtualCPUspervirtualmachine RAMperFTVM(GB) Virtualmachinesperhost 16 1 64 4 320 512 252 upto1601 Maximum

1. vSphere4.1supportsupto128,andvSphere4.1Update1supportsupto160. 2. TheachievablenumberofvCPUspercoredependsontheworkloadand specificsofthehardware.Formoreinformationseethelatestversionof PerformanceBestPracticesforVMwarevSphere.

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Configuration Maximums

Memory Maximums
Table 3containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostmemory. Table 3. Memory Maximums
Item RAMperhost MaximumRAMallocatedtoserviceconsole MinimumRAMallocatedtoserviceconsole Numberofswapfiles Swapfilesize Maximum 1TB 800MB 272MB 1pervirtualmachine SameasmaximumvirtualmachineRAM

Storage Maximums
Table 4containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhoststorage. Table 4. Storage Maximums
Item iSCSI Physical LUNsperserver Qlogic1GbiSCSIHBAinitiatorportsperserver Broadcom1GbiSCSIHBAinitiatorportsperserver Broadcom10GbiSCSIHBAinitiatorportsperserver NICsthatcanbeassociatedorportboundwiththesoftwareiSCSIstack perserver Numberoftotalpathsonaserver NumberofpathstoaLUN(softwareiSCSIandhardwareiSCSI) QlogiciSCSI:dynamictargetsperadapterport QlogiciSCSI:statictargetsperadapterport Broadcom1GbiSCSIHBAtargets Broadcom10GbiSCSIHBAtargets SoftwareiSCSItargets NAS NFSmountsperhost Fibre Channel LUNsperhost LUNsize LUNID LUNsconcurrentlyopenedbyallvirtualmachines NumberofpathstoaLUN Numberoftotalpathsonaserver NumberofHBAsofanytype HBAports TargetsperHBA 256 2TBminus512 bytes 255 256 32 1024 8 16 256 64 256 4 4 4 8 1024 8 64 62 64 64 2561 Maximum

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Configuration Maximums

Table 4. Storage Maximums (Continued)

Item VMFS Rawdevicemapping(RDM)size Volumesize Volumesperhost Hostspervolume VMFS-3 Blocksize Filesize(1MBblocksize) Filesize(2MBblocksize) Filesize(4MBblocksize) Filesize(8MBblocksize) Filespervolume 8MB 256GB 512GB 1TB 2TBminus512 bytes Approximately30,720 2TBminus512 bytes 64TB 256 64 Maximum

1. Thesumofstatictargets(manuallyassignedIPaddresses)anddynamictargets(IPaddresses assignedtodiscoveredtargets)maynotexceedthisnumber.

Networking Maximums
Thefollowinglimitsrepresentachievablemaximumconfigurationlimitsfornetworkinginenvironments wherenoothermorerestrictivelimitsapply(forexample,vCenterServerlimits,thelimitsimposedby featuressuchasHAorDRS,andotherconfigurationsthatmightimposerestrictionsmustbeconsideredwhen deployinglargescalesystems). Foradditionalinformationaboutthesemaximums,seeKB1020808. Table 5containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostnetworking. Table 5. Networking Maximums
Item Physical NICs e10001GBEthernetports(IntelPCIx) e1000e1GBEthernetports(IntelPCIe) igb1GBEthernetports(Intel) tg31GBEthernetports(Broadcom) bnx21GBEthernetports(Broadcom) forcedeth1GBEthernetports(NVIDIA) s2io10GBEthernetports(Neterion) nx_nic10GBEthernetports(NetXen) ixgbeOplin10GBEthernetports(Intel) bnx2x10GBEthernetports(Broadcom) Infinibandports(refertoVMwareCommunitySupport) VMDirectPath limits VMDirectPathPCI/PCIedevicesperhost VMDirectPathPCI/PCIedevicespervirtualmachine 8 43 32 24 16 32 161 2 4 4 4 4 N/A2 Maximum

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Configuration Maximums

Table 5. Networking Maximums (Continued)

Item vNetwork Standard and Distributed Switch Totalvirtualnetworkswitchportsperhost(vDSandvSSports) MaximumACTIVEportsperhost(vDSandVSS) Virtualnetworkswitchcreationportsperstandardswitch Portgroupsperstandardswitch StaticorDynamicPortgroupsperdistributedswitch EphemeralPortgroupsperdistributedswitch Portsperdistributedswitch DistributedvirtualnetworkswitchportspervCenter StaticorDynamicPortgroupspervCenter EphemeralPortgroupspervCenter DistributedswitchespervCenter DistributedswitchesperHost Hostsperdistributedswitch 4096 1016 4088 512 5000 1016 20000 20000 5000 1016 32 16 350 Maximum

1. Recommendednumberofportsforbnx2wheninMSIXmodeandjumboconfigurationis6. ThisvaluetakesprecedenceoverrecommendationsinKB1020808forthisconfiguration. 2. MellanoxTechnologiesInfiniBandHCAdevicedriversareavailabledirectlyfromMellanox Technologies.RefertoMellanoxforsupportstatusofInfiniBandHCAswith ESX. http://www.mellanox.com 3. Avirtualmachinecansupport6devices,if2ofthemareTeradicidevices.

Resource Pool and Cluster Maximums

Table 6containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostresourcepoolsandclusters. Table 6. Cluster Maximums
Item Cluster (all clusters including HA and DRS) Hostspercluster Virtualmachinespercluster Virtualmachinesperhost MaximumconcurrenthostHAfailover Failoveraspercentageofcluster Resourcepoolspercluster Resource Pool Resourcepooltreedepth Resourcepoolsperhost Childrenperresourcepool
1. Additional4resourcepoolsareusedbysysteminternals

Maximum

32 3000 320 4 50% 512

81 4096 1024

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Configuration Maximums

Using Maximum Values for More than One Configuration Option

Ifanyoneoftheconfigurationoptionslistedintheabovetablesisusedatitsmaximumlimitvalue,theESX hostandvCenterServerwithdefaultconfigurationshouldbeabletowithstandthevalues. Ifmorethanoneconfigurationoptions(suchas,numberofvirtualmachines,numberofLUNs,numberofvDS portsetc.)areusedattheirmaximumlimit,someoftheprocessesrunningonthehostmightrunoutof memory.ThismightcausethehosttokeepdisconnectingfromthevCenterServer.Insuchacase,youneedto increasethememorypoolforthesehostprocessessothatthehostcanwithstandtheworkloadyouare planning.Youneedtoincreaseyourmemorypoolsizeincorrelationtothenumberofconfigurationoptions youareusingatthemaximumvalue.

vCenter Server Maximums

Table 7containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtovCenterServer. Table 7. vCenter Server Maximums
Item vCenter Server Scalability HostspervCenterServer PoweredonvirtualmachinespervCenterServer RegisteredvirtualmachinespervCenterServer LinkedvCenterServers HostsinlinkedvCenterServers PoweredonvirtualmachineinlinkedvCenterServers RegisteredvirtualmachineinlinkedvCenterServers ConcurrentvSphereClients Numberofhostperdatacenter Concurrent Operations Concurrentprovisioningoperationsperhost Concurrentprovisioningoperationsperdatastore ConcurrentvMotionoperationsperhost(1Gb/snetwork) ConcurrentvMotionoperationsperhost(10Gb/snetwork) ConcurrentvMotionoperationsperVMFS3datastore ConcurrentStoragevMotionoperationsperhost ConcurrentStoragevMotionoperationsperdatastore 4 4 41 81 128 2 8 1000 10000 15000 10 3000 30000 50000 100 400 Maximum

1. ConcurrentvMotionoperationiscurrentlysupportedonlywhensourceanddestination hostsareinthesamecluster.

vCenter Server Extensions

ThefollowingtablescontainconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtovCenterServerextensions.

VMwarevCenterUpdateManageronpage 7 VMwarevCenterOrchestratoronpage 7 VMwarevCenterConverteronpage 8 vSphereStorageManagementInitiativeSpecification(SMIS)onpage 8

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Configuration Maximums

VMware vCenter Update Manager

Table 8containsconfigurationmaximumsforvCenterUpdateManager. Table 8. vCenter Update Manager Maximums
Item vCenter Update Manager Scalability HostscansinasinglevCenterServer VirtualmachinescansinasinglevCenterServer CiscoVDSupdateanddeployment Concurrent Operations VirtualmachineremediationperESXhost PoweredonWindowsvirtualmachinescansperESXhost PoweredoffWindowsvirtualmachinescansperESXhost PoweredonLinuxvirtualmachinescansperESXhost VMwareToolsscanperESXhost VMwareToolsupgradeperESXhost Virtualmachinehardwarescanperhost Virtualmachinehardwareupgradeperhost VirtualmachineremediationperVUMserver PoweredonWindowsvirtualmachinescanperVUMserver PoweredoffWindowsvirtualmachinescanperVUMserver PoweredonLinuxvirtualmachinescanVUMserver VMwareToolsscanperVUMserver VMwareToolsupgradeperVUMserver VirtualmachinehardwarescanperVUMserver VirtualmachinehardwareupgradeperVUMserver ESXhostscanperVUMserver ESXhostremediationperVUMserver ESXhostupgradeperVUMserver ESXhostupgradepercluster 5 5 5 2 24 24 24 24 48 17 10 8 75 75 75 75 70 8 44 1 1000 10000 70 Maximum

VMware vCenter Orchestrator

Table 9containsconfigurationmaximumsforvCenterOrchestrator. Table 9. vCenter Orchestrator Maximums
Item ConnectedvCenterServersystems ConnectedESX/ESXiinstances Connectedvirtualmachines Concurrentrunningworkflows
1. Virtualmachinesspreadacross10vCenterServers

Maximum 10 100 150001 150

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Configuration Maximums

VMware vCenter Converter

Table 10containsconfigurationmaximumsforvCenterConverter. Table 10. vCenter Converter Maximums
Item Concurrentvirtualmachinetovirtualmachineimportorexporttasks Concurrentphysicalmachinetovirtualmachineimportorexporttasks Maximum 8 20

vSphere Storage Management Initiative - Specification (SMI-S)

Table 11containsconfigurationmaximumsforvSphereSMIS. Table 11. vSphere SMI-S Maximums
Item NumberofvCenterServersystemsconnected NumberofESX/ESXihostsconnected NumberofESX/ESXihostsmanagedbyvCenterServer NumberofvirtualmachinesregisteredinvCenterServer Maximum 1 1000 320 15000

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