Topic

Configuration Maximums
VMware vSphere 4.0

Whenyouselectandconfigureyourvirtualandphysicalequipment,youmuststayatorbelowthemaximums supportedbyvSphere4.0.Thelimitspresentedinthefollowingtablesrepresenttested,recommendedlimits, andtheyarefullysupportedbyVMware.

VirtualMachineMaximumsonpage1 ESXHostMaximumsonpage3 vCenterServerMaximumsonpage7 vCenterServerExtensionsonpage8

Thelimitspresentedinthisdocumentcanbeaffectedbyotherfactors,suchashardwaredependencies.For moreinformationaboutsupportedhardware,seetheappropriateESXhardwarecompatibilityguide.Please consultindividualsolutionlimitstoensurethatyoudonotexceedsupportedconfigurationsforyour environment. TheConfigurationMaximumsforvSphere4.0coversESX,ESXi,andvCenterServer.

Virtual Machine Maximums

Table1containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtovirtualmachines. Table 1. Virtual Machine Maximums
Item Compute VirtualCPUspervirtualmachine(VirtualSMP) Memory RAMpervirtualmachine Virtualmachineswapfilesize Storage Virtual Adapters and Devices VirtualSCSIadapterspervirtualmachine VirtualSCSItargetspervirtualSCSIadapter VirtualSCSItargetspervirtualmachine Disksize IDEcontrollerspervirtualmachine IDEdevicespervirtualmachine Floppycontrollerspervirtualmachine 42 153 60 2TBminus 512B4 15 46 1 255GB 255GB1 8 Maximum

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Configuration Maximums

Table 1. Virtual Machine Maximums (Continued)

Item Floppydevicespervirtualmachine Networking Virtual Devices VirtualNICspervirtualmachine Virtual Peripheral Ports Parallelportspervirtualmachine Serialportspervirtualmachine VMDirectPath VMDirectPathPCI/PCIedevicespervirtualmachine VMDirectPathSCSItargetspervirtualmachine Miscellaneous Concurrentremoteconsoleconnectionstoavirtualmachine
1. Sameasthemaximumvirtualmachinememorysize. 2. AnycombinationofsupportedSCSIvirtualstoragecontrollers.Four ParavirtualSCSIadaptersmaybeusedonlyifthevirtualmachineboots fromadeviceattachedtoanIDEcontroller,orfromthenetwork. 3. Anycombinationofdisk,CDROMorVMDirectPathSCSItarget. 4. LimitedbymaximumVMFSfilesize(assumes8MBVMFSblocksize). 5. Supportstwochannels(primaryandsecondary)eachwithamasterand slavedevice. 6. DevicescanbeeitherCDROMordisk. 7. BIOSisconfiguredforonefloppydevice. 8. AnycombinationofsupportedvirtualNICs. 9. RequiresI/OMMUonhost.

Maximum 27

108

3 4

29 60

40

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Configuration Maximums

ESX Host Maximums

ThefollowingtablescontainconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhosts.

StorageMaximumsonpage3 ComputeMaximumsonpage5 MemoryMaximumsonpage5 NetworkingMaximumsonpage6 ResourcePoolandClusterMaximumsonpage7

Storage Maximums
VMFS2issupportedonESX3.0through3.5. Table2containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhoststorage. Table 2. Storage Maximums
Item VMFS-General Rawdevicemapping(RDM)size Volumesize Hostspervolume Virtualmachinespervolume Volumesperhost Extentspervolume Hostspercluster Extentssize MaxI/Osize(beforesplits) VMFS-2 Filespervolume 256+(64x additional extents) 256MB 456GB 2TB 27TB 64TB 2TBminus 512B 64TBminus 16K 641 256 256 32 32 2TBminus 512B 32MB Maximum

Blocksize Filesize(blocksize=1MB) Filesize(blocksize=8MB) Filesize(blocksize=64MB) Filesize(blocksize=256MB) VMFS-3 VMFS3volumesconfiguredperhost Filespervolume Blocksize Filesize(blocksize=1MB) Filesize(blocksize=2MB)

256 ~30,7202 8MB 256GBminus 512B 512GBminus 512B

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Configuration Maximums

Table 2. Storage Maximums (Continued)

Item Filesize(blocksize=4MB) Filesize(blocksize=8MB) Fibre Channel LUNsperhost LUNsize PathstoaLUN Totalpathsonahost LUNsconcurrentlyopenedbyallvirtualmachines LUNID HBAsperhost HBAports TargetsperHBA NFS DefaultNFSdatastores NFSdatastores 8 64(requires changesto advanced settings) 2563 2TBminus 512B 16 1024 256 255 8 16 256 Maximum 1TBminus 512B 2TBminus 512B

Hardware iSCSI Initiators LUNsperhost LUNsconcurrentlyused Initiatorportsperhost Totalpathsonahost PathstoaLUN Dynamictargetsperadapterport Statictargetsperadapterport Software iSCSI Initiators LUNsperhost LUNsconcurrentlyused NICsportboundwiththesoftwareiSCSIstackperserver Targets(thesumofstatictargetsanddynamictargetsmaynotexceed thisfigure) PathstoaLUN Totalpaths
1. DRSlimitis64.Linkedclonelimitis2048. 2. Sufficienttosupportthemaximumvirtualmachines. 3. Includeslocaldevices/disks.

2563 256 4 1024 8 643 613

2563 256 8 2563 8 1024

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Configuration Maximums

Compute Maximums
Table3containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostcomputeresources. Table 3. Compute Maximums
Item VirtualCPUsperhost Virtualmachinesperhost Logicalprocessorsperhost VirtualCPUsperphysicalcore
1. Specificsolutionlimitsmaybelower;pleasecheckindividualsolution limitsformaximumsupportedconfigurations. 2. LogicalCPUsperhost=CPUsocketsxcores/socketxthreads/core. RegardlessofthehostsconfigurationofCPUsockets,cores/socketor threadsperCPUcore,thetotalnumberoflogicalCPUs(hardware threads)maynotexceedthisnumber.LogicalCPUsinexcessofthis numberareignored. 3. TheachievablenumberofvCPUspercoredependsontheworkloadand specificsofthehardware.FormoreinformationseethevSphere4.0 PerformanceBestPracticesandBenchmarkingGuidelines.

Maximum 512 3201 642 203

Memory Maximums
Table4containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostmemory. Table 4. Memory Maximums
Item SizeofRAMperhost MaximumRAMallocatedtoserviceconsole MinimumRAMallocatedtoserviceconsole Swapfiles Swapfilesize Maximum 1TB 800MB 400MB 1pervirtual machine Sameasmax virtual machineRAM

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Configuration Maximums

Networking Maximums
Thefollowinglimitsrepresentachievablemaximumconfigurationlimitsfornetworkinginenvironments wherenoothermorerestrictivelimitsapply.Forexample,vCenterServerlimits,thelimitsimposedby featuressuchasHAorDRS,andotherconfigurationsthatmightimposerestrictionsmustbeconsideredwhen deployinglargescalesystems. Table5containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostnetworking. Table 5. Networking Maximums
Item Physical NICs
1

Maximum

e1000NICsEthernetports(IntelPCIxNIC) e1000eNICsEthernetports(IntelPCIeNIC) igb1GBEthernetports(Intel) tg31GBEthernetports(Broadcom) bnx21GBEthernetports(Broadcom) forcedeth1GBEthernetports(Nvidia) s2io10GBEthernetports(Neterion) nx_nic10GBEthernetports(NetXen) ixgbeOplin10GBEthernetports(Intel) bnx2x10GBEthernetports(Broadcom) Infinibandports(refertoVMwareCommunitySupport) PCI VMDirectPath Devices2 PCIVMDirectPathdevicesperhost vNetwork Standard Switch Totalvirtualnetworkswitchportsperhost(vDSandvSSports) Virtualnetworkswitchportsperstandardswitch Portgroupsperstandardswitch Standardswitchesperhost vNetwork Distributed Switch Totalvirtualnetworkswitchportsperhost(vDSandvSSports) DistributedvirtualnetworkswitchportspervCenter DistributedportgroupspervCenter DistributedswitchespervCenter Hostsperdistributedswitch
1. MellanoxTechnologiesInfiniBandHCAdevicedriversareavailable directlyfromMellanoxTechnologies.PleaserefertoMellanoxfor supportstatusofInfiniBandHCAswithESX.InfinibanddriversforESXi hostsarenotavailable.http://www.mellanox.com 2. Theselimitsaresupportedwithstandardswitchesanddistributed virtualswitches. 3. Defaultis256withamaximumof15DVSsrunningconcurrently.Ifthe numberofportsisincreasedto4096,thenonlyoneVDScanexistonthe host.

32 32 16 32 16 2 4 4 4 4 N/A1

4096 4088 512 248

40963 6000 512 16 64

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Configuration Maximums

Resource Pool and Cluster Maximums

Table6containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtoESXhostresourcepools. Table 6. Resource Pool Maximums
Item HA Cluster HostsperHAcluster VirtualmachinesperHAcluster VirtualmachinesperhostinHAcluster Failoverhostspercluster Failoveraspercentageofcluster DRS Cluster HostsperDRScluster VirtualmachinesperDRScluster VirtualmachinesperhostinDRScluster Resource Pool Resourcepoolsperhost Childrenperresourcepool Treedepthperresourcepool TreedepthperresourcepoolinaDRScluster Resourcepoolspercluster
1. Configurationsexceeding40virtualmachinesperhostarelimitedto clustersizenogreaterthan8nodes. 2. Poweredonvirtualmachines.

Maximum

32 1280 1001 4 50%

32 12802 256

4096 1024 12 10 512

vCenter Server Maximums

Table7containsconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtovCenterServer. Table 7. vCenter Server Maximums
Item vCenter Server Scalability Hosts(32bitOSserver) Poweredonvirtualmachines(32bitOSserver) Registeredvirtualmachines(32bitOSserver) Hosts(64bitOSserver) Poweredonvirtualmachines(64bitOSserver) Registeredvirtualmachines(64bitOSserver) LinkedvCenterServersystems HostsinLinkedmodeenvironment PoweredonvirtualmachinesinLinkedmodeenvironment RegisteredvirtualmachineinLinkedmodeenvironment ConcurrentvSphereclientconnections(32bitOSserver) ConcurrentvSphereclientconnections(64bitOSserver) Hostsperdatacenter 200 2000 3000 300 3000 4500 10 1000 10000 15000 15 30 100 Maximum

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Configuration Maximums

Table 7. vCenter Server Maximums

Item Concurrent Operations Concurrentprovisioningoperationsperhost Concurrentprovisioningoperationsperdatastore ConcurrentVMotionoperationsperhost ConcurrentVMotionoperationsperVMFS3datastore ConcurrentStorageVMotionoperationsperhost ConcurrentStorageVMotionoperationsperdatastore ConcurrentoperationspervCenterServer
1. Configurable,provisioningoperationsincludeclone,relocate. 2. Configurable.

Maximum

81 81 22 42 22 4 96

vCenter Server Extensions

ThefollowingtablescontainconfigurationmaximumsrelatedtovCenterServerextensions.

VMwarevCenterUpdateManageronpage8 VMwarevCenterOrchestratoronpage9 VMwarevCenterConverteronpage9 vSphereStorageManagementInitiativeSpecification(SMIS)onpage9

VMware vCenter Update Manager

Table8containsconfigurationmaximumsforvCenterUpdateManager. Table 8. vCenter Update Manager Maximums
Item vCenter Update Manager Scalability Concurrenthostsscanned(64bitOSserver) Concurrenthostsscanned(32bitOSserver) Concurrentvirtualmachinesscanned(64bitOSserver) Concurrentvirtualmachinesscanned(32bitOSserver) CiscoVDSupdateanddeployment Concurrent Operations VirtualmachineremediationperESXhost PoweredonWindowsvirtualmachinescanperESXhost PoweredoffWindowsvirtualmachinescanperESXhost PoweredonLinuxvirtualmachinescanperESXhost VMwareToolsscanperESXhost VMwareToolsupgradeperESXhost Virtualmachinehardwarescanperhost Virtualmachinehardwareupgradeperhost VirtualmachineremediationperVUMserver PoweredonWindowsvirtualmachinescanperVUMserver PoweredoffWindowsvirtualmachinescanperVUMserver 5 6 6 145 145 145 145 145 48 72 10 300 200 4000 200 70 Maximum

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Configuration Maximums

Table 8. vCenter Update Manager Maximums

Item PoweredonLinuxvirtualmachinescanVUMserver VMwareToolsscanperVUMserver VMwareToolsupgradeperVUMserver ESXhostscanperVUMserver ESXhostremediationperVUMserver ESXhostupgradeperVUMserver ESXhostupgradepercluster Maximum 145 145 145 72 8 48 1

VMware vCenter Orchestrator

Table9containsconfigurationmaximumsforvCenterOrchestrator. Table 9. vCenter Orchestrator Maximums
Item ConnectedvCenterServersystems ConnectedESX/ESXiservers Connectedvirtualmachines Concurrentrunningworkflows Maximum 10 100 3000 150

VMware vCenter Converter

Table10containsconfigurationmaximumsforvCenterConverter. Table 10. vCenter Converter Maximums
Item Concurrentimport/exporttasks(assumesnoloadonvCenterServer system) Maximum 16

vSphere Storage Management Initiative - Specification (SMI-S)

Table11containsconfigurationmaximumsforvSphereSMIS. Table 11. vSphere SMI-S Maximums
Item NumberofvCenterServersystemsconnected NumberofESX/ESXihostsconnected NumberofESX/ESXihostsmanagedinvCenterServer NumberofvirtualmachinesregisteredinvCenterServer NumberofdatastoresregisteredinvCenterServer Maximum 1 1 100 1000 100

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