VMware has really grown in scalability from the early days of ESX 1.0 with each new release of vSphere. I put together this table on how the configuration maximums have increased over the years so you can see just how much it scales over the years. VMware has published there Configuration Maximums documentation with each release starting with VI3 which you should be familiar with especially if you are trying to get a certification. I pieced together the earlier versions from the installation documentation for each release, there isn’t much info available on ESX 1.0 so if you know anything please fill in the blanks for me. Notice how the VM virtual disk size of 2TB has never changed, this is to due file system limitations that VMware has not yet been able to overcome. With their new Virtual Volumes architecture that limit may finally be gone. Also note on the earlier versions the documentation did not state a 2TB virtual disk limit although I’m almost positive it existed, the documentation stated “9TB per virtual disk”, not sure why though.
Configuration Maximums for VMware ESX/vSphere
VMware release: 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.1 5.0 5.1 5.5 6.0
vCPUs per VM 1 1 2 2 4 4 8 8 32 64 128
RAM per VM 2GB 3.6GB 3.6GB 3.6GB 16GB 64GB 255GB 255GB 1TB 1TB 4TB
NICs per VM ? 4 4 4 4 4 10 10 10 10
VM Virtual Disk ? ? ? ? 2TB 2TB 2TB 2TB 2TB 2TB 62TB
VMFS Volume ? 64TB 64TB 64TB 64TB 64TB 64TB 64TB 64TB 64TB
pCPU per host ? 8 16 16 32 32 64 160 160 160 320
vCPU per host ? 64 80 80 128 128 512 512 2048 2048 4096
RAM per host ? 64GB 64GB 64GB 64GB 256GB 1TB 1TB 2TB 2TB 4TB
pNICs per host ? 16 16 16 32 32 32 32 32 32
In addition hears a diagram from VMware that depicts the configuration maximums in a slightly different manner:
VMware Configuration Maximum Published Documents:
- VMware VI3 Configuration Maximums (3.0.1)
- VMware VI3 Configuration Maximums (3.5)
- VMware VI3 Configuration Maximums (3.5 Update 2)
- VMware vSphere Configuration Maximums (4.0)
- VMware vSphere Configuration Maximums (4.1)
- VMware vSphere Configuration Maximums (5.0)
- VMware vSphere Configuration Maximums (5.1)
