This post describes the NSX for vSphere Configuration Maximums for version 6.0.x, 6.1.x and 6.2.x.
Whenever I got into a discussions about sizing, scalability and maximums of NSX I always turned to an excellent post written by Martijn Smit. But this post only contained information until version 6.1.x and not the latest version 6.2.x. And then during one of my projects some questions around the scalability of version 6.2.x came up and we had to do some research to find these scalability numbers. You can find the results of that research below.
UPDATE: VMware has requested that I take down this article because I’ve used internal numbers that are only for use to help the field design deployments. Without other design information the numbers alone it could create support and competitive issues. Therefore I updated the article and removed the items that cannot be found on the official documentation center.
| NSX 6.0 | NSX 6.1 | NSX 6.2 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nodes | |||
| vCenter | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Controllers | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| vCenter Clusters | 12 | 12 | 16 |
| Hosts per Cluster | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Hosts per Transport Zone | 256 | 256 | 256 |
| L2 | |||
| Logical Switch | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| Logical Switch Ports | 50,000 | 50,000 | 50,000 |
| VXLAN/VLAN l2 Bridges per DLR | 500 | 500 | 500 |
| Identity Firewall | |||
| Active Directory Groups 3 | 500 | 500 | 500 |
| Users per Group 3 | 1,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Max # of users in a domain 3 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 |
| VMs joined to a domain | 1,000 | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Maximum # of domains | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| L3 Distributed Logical Router (DLR) | |||
| DLRs per ESXi host | 100 | 1000 | 1000 |
| DLRs per NSX Manager | 1200 | 1200 | 1200 |
| Interfaces per DLR | 991 | 991 | 991 |
| Uplinks per DLR | 8 | 8 | 8 |
| Interfaces per ESXi Host | 10,000 | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| OSPF Adjacencies per DLR | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| BGP Neighbors per DLR | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Maximum Paths with ECMP | – | 8 | 8 |
| L3 Edge Service Gateway (ESG) | |||
| Maximum # of ESGs 4 | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
| Maximum # Interfaces | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Maximum # of Sub-interfaces | – | 200 | 200 |
| Secondary IP addresses | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
1 As this is depending on multiple factors, please contact VMware for accurate estimate.
2 Number of records over 15 days.
3 At the moment there is no upper limit on any of the numbers, so the Active Directory Synchronization may work with even larger Active Directory setup.
4 HA does not have an impact on the maximum number of ESGs.
NSX for vsphere Configuration Maximums Disclaimer
These numbers can be used as a guidance and are not 110% confirmed by VMware. I’m still hopeful that VMware soon will publish an official NSX Maximum Configurations document and we do not have to gather these numbers from everywhere anymore. Only time will tell 🙂 enjoy!
