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!
