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The new VMware vSphere 6.7, recently available in GA, increase all configuration maximums to new limits (compared to the v6.5 and previous versions).

Maybe we can say with no limit, or at least, to be serious, with really huge numbers compared to the actual needs and the existing compunting power. Those new limits are both for scalability aspect, but also to fit with possible performance requirements, considering that a bigger number of business critical applications are going in the virtual environment.

For more information see the new official site: VMware Configuration Maximum.

Host ESXi 6.7

Limits remains quite the same of v6.5, but there are interesting improvements in the storage and network part:

vSphere 5.0 vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vSphere 6.7
Logical CPU
160 160 320 480 576 768
Physical RAM
2 TB 2 TB 4 TB 12 TB 12 TB 16 TB
NUMA Nodes
8 nodes 8 nodes 16 nodes 16 nodes 16 16
Virtual CPU 2048 2048 4096 4096 4096 4096
Volumes 256 256 256 256 512 1024
Virtual disks 2048 2048 2048 2048 2048 2048
Virtual Machines 512 512 512 1024 1024 1024

Note that maximum physical CPUs: it used the logical CPU concept to consider also cores and hyper-threading.

Also note that 16 TB of RAM is supported on specific OEM certified platform. And also the Persisten Memory of 1TB is supported on specific OEM certified platform.

For networking there is the support also for 25 and 50Gbps NICs.

Virtual Machine with Virtual Hardware (vHW 14)

For each virtual machines those are the new limits, that are almost the same of v6.5:

vSphere 5.0 vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vSphere 6.7
Virtual CPU
32 64 64 128 128 128
Virtual RAM
1 TB 1 TB 1 TB 4 TB 6128 GB 6128 GB
Max VMDK size
2 TB – 512 B 2 TB – 512 B 62 TB 62 TB 62 TB 62 TB
Virtual SCSI adapters
4 4 4 4 4 4
Virtual SCSI targets per adapter
15 15 15 15 15 64
Virtual SCSI targets
60 60 60 60 60 256
Virtual NVMe adapters
NA NA NA NA 4 4
Virtual NVMe targets per adapter
NA NA NA NA 15 15
Virtual NVMe targets
NA NA NA Na 60 60
Virtual NICs
10 10 10 10 10 10

Some limits and features are available only with the new virtual hardware, other also for previous versions.

New virtual hardware available in vSphere 6.7 are:

  • Persistent Memory:
    • Max 1 NVDIMM controllers per VM
    • Max 64 NVDIMMs per VM
    • Max 1 TB Non-volatile memory per virtual machine
  • Networking Virtual RDMA:
    • Max 1 Virtual RDMA Adapters per Virtual Machine

VMware FT on vSphere 6.7

Starting with v6.0, vSphere FT finally has grow from v1.0 with new limits:

vSphere 5.0 vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vSphere 6.7
Virtual CPU per VM
1 1 1 4 4 8
Virtual RAM per VM
64 GB 64 GB 64 GB 64 GB 64 GB 128 GB
Virtual disks
16 16 16 16 16 16
Virtual disk size
2 TB
FT VMs per host
4 4 4 4 4 4

VMware vCenter Server (VCSA) 6.7

The virtual appliance (vCSA) deployment of vCenter Server is the first choice with also some new features available only for it!

There are huge increase in the vSphere 6.7 vCSA delivers compared at cluster scale limits, versus vSphere 6.5:

  • 2X faster performance in vCenter operations per second
  • 3X reduction in memory usage
  • 3X faster DRS-related operations (e.g. power-on virtual machine)
vSphere 5.0 vSphere 5.1 vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6.0 vSphere 6.5 vSphere 6.7
Hosts per vCenter
1000 1000 1000 1000 2000 2000
Hosts with Linked mode
3000 3000 3000 4000 4000/5000 5000
Hosts per datacenter 500 500 500 500 200
Hosts per cluster 32 32 32 64 64 64
VMs per cluster 3000 4000 4000 6000 6000 8000
Powered on VMs 10000 10000 10000 10000 25000 25000
Powered on VMs with Linked mode
30000 30000 30000 30000 30000/50000 50000
Registered VMs 15000 15000 15000 15000 35000 35000
Registered VMs with Linked mode
50000 50000 50000 50000 50000/70000 70000
Linked vCenter Servers 10 10 10 10 10/15 15

The number of powered on VMs and registered VMs could be increase using linked mode across vCenter Servers with the same limits of vCenter 6.5U1 (that are bigger compared to the GA version of 6.5). A huge difference is that now Linked mode works also with the embedded PSC!

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-20 and vExpert Pro. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-19. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.