Maximum capacities

If you exceed system limitations, you might experience an application outage or a system outage. Avoid these types of outages by being aware of the maximum capacities and system limitations in advance.

System limitations can be difficult to predict. This topic collection can help you understand your system's maximum capacity. The tables in this topic collection itemize some of the capacity limitations and restrictions that can affect the availability of large systems and their applications. For example, an online application halts when the size of a file or the number of its members reaches the size limitation. These tables list the limits or maximum values for the current release. Some of these maximum values are different (lower) on previous releases. There are environments or configurations where the actual limit can be less than the stated maximum. For example, certain high-level languages can have more restrictive limits. These limits can range from a certain number of objects to memory limitations. Memory limitations are measured in megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), terabytes (TB), and petabytes (PB) where 1 MB equals 1 048 576 bytes, 1 GB equals 1 073 741 824 bytes, 1 TB equals 1 099 511 627 776 bytes, and 1 PB equals 1 125 899 906 842 624 bytes.
Note: The values listed in this topic collection represent theoretical limits, not thresholds, or recommendations. Approaching some of these limits might degrade system performance. Therefore, practical limits might be lower, depending on system size, configuration, and application environment.

You can use IBM® i System Health Services to track important system limits. For example, you can check to see if you are approaching the limit on the maximum number of objects that can be in a library. For more information, see System Health Services.