Maximums
Virtual Machine Maximums
Host Maximums
| ESX 6.0 | ESX 5.5 | ESX 5.1 | ESX 5 | ESX 4.1 | ESX 4.0 | ESX 3.5 | ESX 3 | ESX 2 | ESX 1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logical CPUs per host | 480 | 320 | 160 | 160 | 160 | 64 | 32 | 32 | 16 | 8 |
| Virtual machines per host | 2048 | 512 | 512 | 512 | 320 | 320 | 128 | 128 | 80 | 64 |
| Virtual CPUs per host | 4096 | 4096 | 2048 | 2048 | 512 | 512 | 128 | 128 | 80 | 64 |
| Virtual CPUs per core | 32 | 32 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 20 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| RAM per host | 12TB | 4TB | 2TB | 2TB | 1TB | 1TB | 256GB | 256GB | 64GB | 64GB |
| LUNs per server | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 |
vCenter Server Maximums
| vCenter Server Maximums | ESX 5.5 | ESX 5.1 | ESX 5 | ESX 4.1 | ESX 4.0 | ESX 3.5 | ESX 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosts per vCenter Server | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 1000 | 300 | 200 | 200 |
| Powered on virtual machines | 10000 | 10000 | 10000 | 10000 | 3000 | 2000 | |
| Registered virtual machines | 15000 | 15000 | 15000 | 15000 | 4500 | 2000 | |
| Linked vCenter Servers | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | ||
| Hosts in linked vCenter Servers | 3000 | 3000 | 3000 | 3000 | 1000 | ||
| Powered on virtual machines in linked vCenter | 30000 | 30000 | 30000 | 30000 | 10000 | ||
| Registered virtual machines in linked vCenter | 50000 | 50000 | 50000 | 50000 | 15000 | ||
| Concurrent vSphere Clients | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 30 | ||
| Number of host per datacenter | 500 | 500 | 500 | 400 | 100 | ||
| MAC addresses per vCenter Server | 65536 | 65536 | 65536 | ||||
| USB devices connected at vSphere Client | 20 | 20 | 20 |
Cluster and Resource Pool Maximums
| ESX 6.0 | ESX 5.5 | ESX 5.1 | ESX 5 | ESX 4.1 | ESX 4.0 | ESX 3.5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosts per cluster | 64 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Virtual machines per cluster | 4000 | 4000 | 4000 | 3000 | 3000 | 1280 | |
| Virtual machines per host | 2048 | 512 | 512 | 512 | 320 | 100 | |
| Maximum concurrent host HA failover | 32 | 32 | 4 | 4 | |||
| Failover as percentage of cluster | 100% | 100% | 50% | 50% | |||
| Resource pools per cluster | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 | 512 | 512 | 128 | |
| Resource pools per host | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 | 4096 | |||
| Children per resource pool | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | |||
| Resource pool tree depth | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 12 | 12 |
Network Maximums
| ESX 5.5 | ESX 5.1 | ESX 5 | ESX 4.1 | ESX 4.0 | ESX 3.5 | ESX 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total virtual network switch ports per host | 4096 | 4096 | 4096 | 4096 | 4096 | 127 | |
| Maximum active ports per host | 1016 | 1050 | 1016 | 1016 | 1016 | 1016 | |
| Virtual network switch creation ports | 4088 | 4088 | 4088 | 4088 | 4088 | ||
| Port groups | 512 | 256 | 256 | 512 | 512 | 512 | |
| Distributed virtual network switch ports per vCenter | 60000 | 60000 | 30000 | 20000 | 6000 | ||
| Static port groups per vCenter | 10000 | 10000 | 5000 | 5000 | 512 | ||
| Ephemeral port groups per vCenter | 1016 | 256 | 256 | 1016 | |||
| Hosts per VDS | 500 | 500 | 350 | 350 | 64 | ||
| Distributed switches per vCenter | 128 | 128 | 32 | 32 | 16 | ||
| e1000 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel PCI?x) | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | |
| e1000e 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel PCI?e) | 24 | 24 | 24 | 24 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| igb 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel) | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | ||
| tg3 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom) | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | ||
| bnx2 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom) | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | ||
| forcedeth 1Gb Ethernet ports (NVIDIA) | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |||
| nx_nic 10Gb Ethernet ports (NetXen) | 8 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 4 | ||
| ixgbe 10Gb Ethernet ports (Intel) | 8 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 4 | ||
| bnx2x 10Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom) | 8 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 4 | ||
| be2net 10Gb Ethernet ports (Emulex) | 8 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 4 | ||
| VMDirectPath PCI/PCIe devices per host | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | ||
| VMDirectPath PCI/PCIe devices per virtual machine | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |||
| Concurrent vMotion operations per host (1Gb/s network) | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | ||
| Concurrent vMotion operations per host (10Gb/s network) | 8 | 8 | 8 |
Storage Maximums
| ESX 5.5 | ESX 5.1 | ESX 5 | ESX 4.1 | ESX 4.0 | ESX 3.5 | ESX 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qlogic 1Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |||
| Broadcom 1Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |||
| Broadcom 10Gb iSCSI HBA initiator ports per server | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |||
| Software iSCSI NICs per server | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | |||
| Number of total paths on a server | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | |||
| Number of paths to a iSCSI LUN | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | |||
| Qlogic iSCSI: dynamic targets per adapter port | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | |||
| Qlogic iSCSI: static targets per adapter port | 62 | 62 | 62 | 62 | |||
| Broadcom 1Gb iSCSI HBA targets per adapter port | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | |||
| Broadcom 10Gb iSCSI HBA targets per adapter port | 128 | 128 | 128 | 64 | |||
| Software iSCSI targets | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | ||
| NFS mounts per host | 256 | 256 | 256 | 64 | 64 | ||
| FC LUNs per host | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 |
| FC LUN ID | 255 | 255 | 255 | 255 | 255 | 255 | 255 |
| FC Number of paths to a LUN | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Number of total paths on a server | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 | 1024 |
| Number of HBAs of any type | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | ||
| HBA ports | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 | |
| Targets per HBA | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 15 | |
| Software FCoE adapters | 4 | 4 | 4 | ||||
| Volumes per host | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | 256 | |
| Hosts per volume | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 32 | |
| Powered on virtual machines per VMFS volume | 2048 | 2048 | 2048 | 256 | |||
| Concurrent vMotion operations per datastore | 128 | 128 | 128 | ||||
| Concurrent Storage vMotion operations per datastore | 8 | 8 | 8 | ||||
| Concurrent Storage vMotion operations per host | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||||
| Concurrent non vMotion provisioning operations per host | 8 | 8 | 8 | ||||
| VMFS Volume size | 64TB | 64TB | 64TB | 64TB | 64TB | 64TB | |
| Virtual disks per datastore cluster | 9000 | ||||||
| Datastores per datastore cluster | 64 | ||||||
| Datastore clusters per vCenter | 256 |
Fault Tolerance Maximums
| ESX 6.0 | ESX 5.5 | ESX 5.1 | ESX 5.0 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual disks | 16 | 16 | 16 | |
| Virtual CPUs per virtual machine | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| RAM per FT VM | 64GB | 64GB | 64GB | 64GB |
| Virtual machines per host | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
Virtual SAN Maximums
| ESX 5.5 | |
|---|---|
| Virtual SAN disk groups per host | 5 |
| Magnetic disks per disk group | 7 |
| SSD disks per disk group | 1 |
| Spinning disks in all diskgroups per host | 35 |
| Components per Virtual SAN host | 3000 |
| Number of Virtual SAN nodes in a cluster | 32 |
| Number of datastores per cluster | 1 |
| Virtual machines per host | 100 |
| Virtual machines per cluster | 3200 |
| Virtual machine virtual disk size | 2032GB |
| Disk stripes per object | 12 |
| Percentage of flash read cache reservation | 100 |
| Failure to tolerate | 3 |
| Percentage of object space reservation | 100 |
| Virtual SAN networks/physical network fabrics | 2 |
All informations are based on VMware documentation:
- vSphere 5.5 – Configuration Maximums
- vSphere 5.1 – Configuration Maximums
- vSphere 5.0 – Configuration Maximums
- vSphere 4.1 – Configuration Maximums
- vSphere 4.0 – Configuration Maximums
- Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 U2 – Configuration Maximums
- Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 – Configuration Maximums
- Virtual Infrastructure 3 – Configuration Maximums
Source: Thanks and credits goes to Florian Grehl from Virten.net
sanderdaems
Sander Daems is founder and author of this blog and working as a Lead (Sr.) Consultant by UNICA ICT Solutions. Sander has over 15 years experience in IT, primary focus: virtualization and modern worksplace.
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