VMware Virtual Machine and ESXi Maximums

VMware Virtual Machine and ESXi Maximums:

Every product has its limits, and same is applied to VMware vSphere. In this blog, I am sharing the maximum supported configuration of three recent versions of vSphere – 6.5, 6.0 and 5.5. This information is very useful in Solution Designing and Infrastructure Planning phase. Although there are very few chances that we reach this limit still it should be known so that during configure of virtual and physical equipment, we must stay at or below the maximums supported values by VMware vSphere (ESXi maximums).

Virtual Machine Maximums:

This table shows the maximum limits of Virtual Machine (VM) components like vCPU, vMEM,  Virtual Disk, vNIC and Graphic video device memory.

Virtual Machine Parameters	ESXi 5.5	ESXi 6.0	ESXi 6.5
vCPUs per VM	64	128	128
RAM per VM	1 TB	4 TB	6 TB
Virtual disk size per VM	62 TB	62 TB	62 TB
Virtual NICs per VM	10	10	10
Virtual SCSI adapters per VM	4	4	4
Virtual SCSI targets per VM	60	60	60
Virtual NVMe adapters per VM	-	-	4
Virtual NVMe targets per VM	-	-	60
Video memory per VM	512 MB	512 MB	2 GB

Compute Maximums (ESXi Maximums):

ESXi Host maximum represents the top limit of ESXi parameters like maximum CPU Core, logical CPUs, Memory etc.

Compute Parameters	ESXi 5.5	ESXi 6.0	ESXi 6.5
Logical CPUs per host	320	480	576
NUMA Nodes per host	16	16	16
Virtual machines per host	512	1024	1024
Virtual CPUs per host	4096	4096	4096
Virtual CPUs per core	32	32	32
RAM per host	4 TB	12 TB	12 TB

ESXi Storage Maximums:

Storage related maximum configurations of VMware ESXi are part of below table.

ESXi Storage Parameters	ESXi 5.5	ESXi 6.0	ESXi 6.5
Virtual Disks per Host	2048	2048	2048
LUNs per server	256	256	512
Software iSCSI NICs per server	8	8	8
Number of total paths per server	1024	1024	2048
Number of paths to a LUN (software+hardware iSCSI)	8	8	8
Software iSCSI targets	256	256	256
NAS: NFS mounts per host	256	256	256
FC: Number of HBAs of any type	8	8	8
Software FCoE adapters	4	4	4
VMFS Volume size	64 TB	64 TB	64 TB
Volumes per host	256	256	512
Hosts per volume	64	64	64
Powered on virtual machines per VMFS volume	2048	2048	2048
Concurrent vMotion operations per VMFS volume	128	128	128

ESXi Networking Maximums:

Below table represents the maximum supported values of Networking related parameters like the number of NICs, switches, ports etc.

ESXi Networking Parameters	ESXi 5.5	ESXi 6.0	ESXi 6.5
igb 1Gb Ethernet ports (Intel)	16	16	16 (ibgn)
tg3 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom)	32	32	32 (ntg3)
bnx2 1Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom)	16	16	16
ixgbe 10Gb Ethernet ports (Intel)	8	16	16
bnx2x 10Gb Ethernet ports (Broadcom)	8	8	8
Combination of 10Gb and 1Gb ethernet ports	Eight 10Gb and Four 1Gb ports	Sixteen 10 Gb and four 1 Gb ports	Sixteen 10 GB and four 1 GB ports
mlx4_en 40GB Ethernet Ports (Mellanox)	4	4	4 (nmlx4_en)
SR‐IOV Number of virtual functions	64	1024	1024
SR‐IOV Number of 10G pNICs	8	8	8
VSS portgroups per host	1000	1000	1000
Distributed switches per host	16	16	16
Total virtual network switch ports per host (VDS and VSS ports)	4096	4096	4096
Maximum active ports per host (VDS and VSS)	1016	1016	1016
Virtual network switch creation ports per standard switch	4088	4088	4088
Port groups per standard switch	512	512	512
Ports per distributed switch	60,000	60,000	60,000

The above limits are tested, recommended and fully supported by VMware. But It can be affected by other factors, such as hardware dependencies. That’s why before taking any decision please check the hardware compatibility.

Ref: VMware vSphere Configuration Maximums (Link)

For Configuration Maximums of other products and solutions, like vCenter Server , vSAN, vCloud Directors, please read my next blogs.

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