VMware vSphere ESX and vCenter Configuration Maximums

Below are a comprehensive collection of configuration maximums from VMware products

Virtual Machine MaximumsHost MaximumsvCenter Server MaximumsCluster and Resource Pool MaximumsNetwork MaximumsStorage Maximums

Virtual Machine Maximums

	ESX 5.5	ESX 5.1	ESX 5	ESX 4.1	ESX 4.0	ESX 3.5	ESX 3	ESX 2	ESX 1
Virtual CPUs per virtual machine	64	64	32	8	8	4	4	2	1
RAM per virtual machine	1TB	1TB	1TB	255GB	255GB	65GB	16GB	3,6GB	2GB
Virtual SCSI adapters per virtual machine	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
Virtual disk size	62TB	2TB	2TB	2TB	2TB	2TB	2TB
IDE controllers per virtual machine	1	1	1	1	1	1
IDE devices per virtual machine	4	4	4	4	4	4
Floppy controllers per virtual machine	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Floppy devices per virtual machine	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
Virtual NICs per virtual machine	10	10	10	10	10	4	4	4	4
USB controllers per virtual machine	1	1	1	1
USB devices connected to a virtual machine	20	20	20	20
Parallel ports per virtual machine	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	1
USB 3.0 devices per virtual machine		1	1
Concurrent remote console connections	40	40	40	40	40	10	10

Host Maximums

	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	320	160	160	160	64	32	32	16	8
Virtual machines per host	512	512	512	320	320	128	128	80	64
Virtual CPUs per host	4096	2048	2048	512	512	128	128	80	64
Virtual CPUs per core	32	25	25	25	20	8	8	8	8
RAM per host	4TB	2TB	2TB	1TB	1TB	256GB	256GB	64GB	64GB
LUNs per server	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 5.5	ESX 5.1	ESX 5	ESX 4.1	ESX 4.0	ESX 3.5
Hosts per cluster	32	32	32	32	32	32
Virtual machines per cluster	4000	4000	3000	3000	1280
Virtual machines per host	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