V9.1.1.x Configuration Limits for IBM FlashSystem and SAN Volume Controller

Preventive Service Planning

Abstract

This document lists the configuration limits for all IBM Storage Virtualize Systems (IBM FlashSystem and SVC) using version 9.1.1.x

Content

Refer to product documentation and release notes for detailed information about product behaviour, restrictions and known issues.

Product Documentation Links

Note: On some platforms, software features or combinations of software features are limited by available hardware. If applicable these will be documented in a Software Feature limits page in the relevant Hardware Guide.

The tables in this page use a set of abbreviations for the various FlashSystem (FS) products, and SVC nodes. A full table of these abbreviations can be found at the end of this document.

To make the tables easier to read, you can use the product selector to filter which products are shown.

Limits Tables
Extent Tables
Product Lookup Table

System (Cluster) Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
I/O groups / Control Enclosures per system (cluster)	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Active Nodes per system	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
Spare Nodes per system	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	4
Nodes per fabric	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64
Systems per FlashSystem grid	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32
Inter-cluster partnerships per system	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
IP Quorum devices per system	5	5	5	5	5	5	5	5
Data encryption keys per system	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024
Key servers per system	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
Storage partitions per system	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32

Managed Disk and Pool Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Managed disks (MDisks) per system	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096	4096
Managed disks per storage pool (managed disk group)	128	128	128	128	128	128	128	128
Storage pools per system	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024
Parent pools per system	128	128	128	128	128	128	128	128
Child pools per system	1023	1023	1023	1023	1023	1023	1023	1023
Minimum managed disk extent size	1024 MiB	1024 MiB	1024 MiB	1024 MiB	1024 MiB	1024 MiB	1024 MiB	16 MiB
Maximum managed disk extent size	8192 MiB	8192 MiB	8192 MiB	8192 MiB	8192 MiB	8192 MiB	8192 MiB	8192 MiB
Storage pool extents per system	4194304 (2²²)	4194304 (2²²)	4194304 (2²²)	4194304 (2²²)	4194304 (2²²)	4194304 (2²²)	4194304 (2²²)	4194304 (2²²)
Storage pool extents per vdisk	131072 (2¹⁷)	131072 (2¹⁷)	131072 (2¹⁷)	131072 (2¹⁷)	131072 (2¹⁷)	131072 (2¹⁷)	131072 (2¹⁷)	131072 (2¹⁷)
Storage pool extents per data repository vdisk	524288 (2¹⁹)	524288 (2¹⁹)	524288 (2¹⁹)	524288 (2¹⁹)	524288 (2¹⁹)	524288 (2¹⁹)	524288 (2¹⁹)	524288 (2¹⁹)
Data Reduction Pools per system	4	4	4	4	0	4	4	4
Mdisks per Data Reduction Pool	128	128	128	128	n/a	128	128	128
Volume copies per Data Reduction Pool	8192	8192	15864	32100	n/a	15864	65000	15864
Extents per Data Reduction Pool	524,288 (512k)	524,288 (512k)	524,288 (512k)	524,288 (512k)	n/a	524,288 (512k)	524,288 (512k)	524,288 (512k)
Capacity for an individual external managed disk	1 PB	1 PB	1 PB	1 PB	1 PB	1 PB	1 PB	1 PB
Total storage capacity manageable per system	32 PB	32 PB	32 PB	32 PB	32 PB	32 PB	32 PB	32 PB

Distributed RAID Array Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Arrays per system	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	n/a
FCM arrays per storage pool	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	n/a
Member drives per array	128	128	128	128	128	128	128	n/a
Min / Max member drives per RAID-1 array	2-16	2-16	2-16	2-16	n/a	2-16	2-16	n/a
Min / Max member drives per RAID-5 array	4-8	4-8	4-128	n/a	n/a	4-128	n/a	n/a
Min / Max member drives per RAID-5 array (NVMe drives)	4-8	4-8	4-24	n/a	n/a	4-24	n/a	n/a
Min / Max member drives per RAID-6 array	6-128	6-128	6-128	6-128	6-128	6-128	6-128	n/a
Min / Max member drives per RAID-6 array (NVMe drives)	6-12	6-12	6-24	6-24	24	6-24	6-48	n/a
Rebuild areas per non-FCM array	1-4	1-4	1-4	1-4	1-4	1-4	1-4	n/a
Rebuild areas per FCM array	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	n/a
Min / Max stripe width for RAID-5 array	3-7	3-7	3-16	n/a	n/a	3-16	n/a	n/a
Min / Max stripe width for RAID-6 array	5-16	5-16	5-16	5-16	5-16	5-16	5-16	n/a
Max drive capacity for RAID-5 array	8 TB	8 TB	8 TB	n/a	n/a	8 TB	n/a	n/a
Max SAS drive capacity for RAID-1 array	8 TB	8 TB	8 TB	8 TB	n/a	8 TB	8 TB	n/a
Max Flash drive capacity for RAID-1 array	30.72 TB	30.72 TB	30.72 TB	30.72 TB	n/a	30.72 TB	30.72 TB	n/a
Max drives added to a RAID-1 array in a single DRAID expansion	12	12	12	12	n/a	12	12	n/a
Max drives added to a RAID-5 or RAID-6 array in a single DRAID expansion	42	42	42	42	42	42	42	n/a
Concurrent DRAID expansions per system	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	n/a
Concurrent DRAID expansions per parent storage pool	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	n/a

Volume (Virtual Disk) Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Basic volumes per system	8192	8192	15864	16050	16050	15864	32500	15864
Volume copies per system	8192	8192	15864	16050	16050	15864	32500	15864
Stretched volumes per system	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	7932
Cloud volumes per system	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024
Volume copies per volume	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
Total mirrored volume capacity per I/O group	1024 TB	1024 TB	1024 TB	1024 TB	1024 TB	1024 TB	1024 TB	40 PB
Volume groups per system	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024
Volumes per volume group	512	512	512	512	512	512	512	512
Fully-allocated volume capacity	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB
Thin-provisioned (space-efficient) volume capacity	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB	256 TB
Host mappings per system	64000	64000	64000	64000	64000	64000	64000	64000
Maximum Provisioning Policies	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40

Host Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Hosts per system	256	512	512	2048	2048	512	2048	2048
Volume mappings per host	512	512	2048	2048	2048	2048	2048	2048
Host portsets per system (FC plus Ethernet)	72	72	72	72	72	72	72	72
IP addresses per system	512	512	512	512	512	512	512	512
IP addresses per port	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64
IP addresses per node	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256
Unique IP addresses per port	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64
Routable IP Addresses per port	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
Node IP Addresses per portset for Host Attach	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
FC ports per portset	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
Host clusters per system	512	512	512	512	512	512	512	512
Hosts in a host cluster	128	128	128	128	128	128	128	128

Notes:

IP addresses per port, per node and per system include management IP addresses.

Host: SCSI over Fibre Channel Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Fibre Channel hosts per system	256	512	512	2048	2048	512	2048	2048
Fibre Channel host ports per system	2048	2048	2048	2048	2048	2048	8192	2048
NPIV Direct Attach Logins per Fibre Channel WWPN	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256
Fibre Channel host ports per host (ID)	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32
Fibre Channel logins per port Fibre Channel WWPN	512	512	512	512	512	512	512	512

Notes:

Fibre Channel logins per port Fibre Channel WWPN includes logins from server HBAs, disk controller ports, node ports within the same system and node ports from remote systems.

Host: NVMe over Fabric General Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Total NVMe over Fabric hosts per system	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256
NVMe Qualified Names (NQNs) per host (ID)	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
NVMe Qualified Names (NQNs) per system	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256

Notes:

Total NVMe over Fabric hosts includes NVMe over Fibre Channel, NVMe over RDMA and NVMe over TCP hosts

Host: NVMe over Fibre Channel Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
NVMe over Fibre Channel hosts per system	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256
NVMe over Fibre Channel sessions per FC port	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64

Host: NVMe over RDMA Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
NVMe over RDMA hosts per system	256	n/a	256	256	256	256	256	256
Primary RDMA sessions per port	256	n/a	256	256	256	256	256	256
Host queue size	64	n/a	64	64	64	64	64	64
Number of IO queues	8	n/a	8	8	8	8	8	8

Host: NVMe over TCP Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
NVMe over TCP hosts per system	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256
NVMe over TCP sessions per Ethernet port	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64
Host queue size	128	128	128	128	128	128	128	128
Number of IO queues	8	8	8	8	8	8	8	8

Host: iSCSI Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
iSCSI hosts per system	256	512	512	1024	1024	512	1024	1024
iSCSI names per host	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
iSCSI names per system	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024

Ethernet Session Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
iSCSI sessions per node used for Host Attach	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024

Host: SAS Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
SAS hosts per system	4	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

Replication and HA: Policy-Based Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Total volume capacity per system using policy-based replication (asynchronous replication or HA)	1 PiB	1 PiB	2 PiB	2 PiB	2 PiB	2 PiB	4 PiB	4 PiB
Volumes using policy-based replication (asynchronous replication or HA)	7932	7932	7932	16050	16050	7932	32500	7932
Maximum round-trip latency for asynchronous policy-based replication using Fibre Channel partnerships	250 ms	250 ms	250 ms	250 ms	250 ms	250 ms	250 ms	250 ms
Maximum round-trip latency for asynchronous policy-based replication using IP (long distances using TCP) partnerships	80 ms	80 ms	80 ms	80 ms	80 ms	80 ms	80 ms	80 ms
Maximum round-trip latency for asynchronous policy-based replication using IP (short distances using RDMA) partnerships	3 ms	3 ms	3 ms	3 ms	3 ms	3 ms	3 ms	3 ms
Maximum round-trip latency for policy-based high availability	1 ms	1 ms	1 ms	1 ms	1 ms	1 ms	1 ms	1 ms
Replication policies per system	132	132	132	132	132	132	132	132
I/O group connections per system using policy-based replication (see notes for example)	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12
Total number of I/O groups in remote systems that can be configured for policy-based replication for an I/O group	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6

Notes:

I/O group connections per system using policy-based replication example: If I/O group 0 in system 1 is replicating to two I/O groups in system 2, this counts as two connections. If I/O group 1 in system 1 is also replicating to these same I/O groups, that counts as two additional connections, for a total of four connections.
A volume configured for high availability and disaster recovery counts as using 2x the replicated volume capacity.

IP (long distances using TCP) Partnership Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Inter-cluster IP (long distances using TCP) partnerships per system	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
Inter site links per IP (long distances using TCP) partnership	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
Ports per node per IP (long distances using TCP) partnership	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
IP (long distances using TCP) Partnership Software Compression Limit	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a

IP (short distances using RDMA) Partnership Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
IP (short distances using RDMA) partnerships per system	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
High speed portsets per system	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
High speed portsets per IP (short distances using RDMA) partnership	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
IP addresses per node per high speed portset	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2

Snapshot and FlashCopy Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Snapshots per system	15863	15863	15863	32099	32099	15863	64999	15863
Thin-Clone, Clone Volumes per system	8191	8191	15862	16049	16049	15862	32499	15862
Total snapshot capacity per system	200 PiB	200 PiB	300 PiB	300 PiB	100 PiB	300 PiB	800 PiB	800 PiB
Total volume group snapshot production capacity per system	4 PiB	10 PiB	4 PiB	20 PiB	20 PiB	4 PiB	40 PiB	40 PiB
Total FlashCopy volume capacity per system which legacy FlashCopy can have up to	4 PiB	4 PiB	4 PiB	4 PiB	4 PiB	4 PiB	8 PiB	8 PiB
Safeguarded Policies per system	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32
Snapshot Policies per system	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40
FlashCopy mappings per system	8192	8192	15864	15864	15864	15864	15864	15864
FlashCopy consistency groups per system	500	500	500	500	500	500	500	500
FlashCopy mappings per consistency group	512	512	512	512	512	512	512	512
FlashCopy targets per source	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256
Cloud accounts per system	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Active cloud snapshots per volume	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256

Notes:

Total volume group snapshot production capacity includes legacy FlashCopy, snapshots, clone volumes and change volumes, where supported. For SV3 total volume group snapshot production capacity also includes volume mirroring.
Total snapshot capacity includes snapshots only.
IBM recommends that the sum of volume copies and snapshots in a system should not exceed 50,000 when using standard pools. Data reduction pools are recommended for larger configurations.

External Storage System Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Storage system WWNNs per system (cluster)	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024
Storage system WWPNs per system (cluster)	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024	1024
WWNNs per storage system	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16
WWPNs per WWNN	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16
WWPNs per Mdisk (see comment below)	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16

Notes:

WWPNs per Mdisk means limit of Storage System WWPNs that can have LUN mappings for a specific Storage System LU

System and User Management Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
User accounts per system (Includes the default user accounts)	400	400	400	400	400	400	400	400
User groups per system (Includes the default user groups)	256	256	256	256	256	256	256	256
Ownership groups per system	64	64	64	64	64	64	64	64
Management IP addresses per port	33	33	33	33	33	33	33	33
Management IP addresses per portset	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Management IP addresses per system	34	34	34	34	34	34	34	34
Management portsets per system	33	33	33	33	33	33	33	33
Remote authentication (LDAP) services per system	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Multifactor authentication services per system	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Single sign-on authentication services per system	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
DNS servers per system	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
NTP servers per system	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
iSNS servers per system	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Concurrent open SSH sessions per system	32	32	32	32	32	32	32	32
Two Person Integrity Requests per system	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
Patches per node (Includes Installed, Obsolete and Error)	30	30	30	30	30	30	30	30

Notes:

Default SystemManagement portset (portset 72) can have up to two systems IP addresses.

Event Notification Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
SNMP servers per system	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
Syslog servers per system	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
Email (SMTP) servers per system	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
Email users (recipients) per system	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12
LDAP servers per system	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6

REST API Limits

Limit	FS5200	FS5300	FS7200	FS7300	FSC200	FS9200	FS9500	SVC SV3
Max active connections per cluster	40	40	40	40	40	40	40	40
Max requests/sec to auth endpoint	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
Max requests/sec to command endpoints	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10

Extent Tables

Volume Capacity

Extent Size (MiB)	Fully Allocated Volume Capacity	Thin-Provisioned Volume Capacity in Standard Pools	Data Reduced Volume Capacity in Data Reduction Pools (includes Thin-provisioning)	Total capacity of Data Reduced Volumes in a Data Reduction Pool (includes Thin-provisioning)
16	2 TiB	1.8 TiB	n/a	n/a
32	4 TiB	3.6 TiB	n/a	n/a
64	8 TiB	7.3 TiB	n/a	n/a
128	16 TiB	14.6 TiB	n/a	n/a
256	32 TiB	29.1 TiB	n/a	n/a
512	64 TiB	59.1 TiB	n/a	n/a
1024	128 TiB	118.2 TiB	128 TiB	512 TiB
2048	256 TiB	236.5 TiB	256 TiB	1 PiB
4096	256 TiB	256 TiB	256 TiB	2 PiB
8192	256 TiB	256 TiB	256 TiB	4 PiB

Mdisk Capacity

Extent Size (MiB)	Virtualized Mdisk Capacity	DRAID Capacity	Total Storage Capacity Manageable per System
16	2 TiB	n/a	64 TiB
32	4 TiB	n/a	128 TiB
64	8 TiB	n/a	256 TiB
128	16 TiB	n/a	512 TiB
256	32 TiB	n/a	1 PiB
512	64 TiB	n/a	2 PiB
1024	128 TiB	2 PiB	4 PiB
2048	256 TiB	4 PiB	8 PiB
4096	512 TiB	8 PiB	16 PiB
8192	1 PiB	16 PiB	32 PiB

Product Lookup

Product	Table Header
IBM FlashSystem 5200	FS5200
IBM FlashSystem 5300	FS5300
IBM FlashSystem 7200	FS7200
IBM FlashSystem 7300	FS7300
IBM FlashSystem C200	FSC200
IBM FlashSystem 9200	FS9200
IBM FlashSystem 9500	FS9500
IBM SAN Volume Controller - SV3 nodes	SVC SV3

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Tips

V9.1.1.x Configuration Limits for IBM FlashSystem and SAN Volume Controller

Preventive Service Planning

Abstract

Content

System (Cluster) Limits

Managed Disk and Pool Limits

Distributed RAID Array Limits

Volume (Virtual Disk) Limits

Host Limits

Host: SCSI over Fibre Channel Limits

Host: NVMe over Fabric General Limits

Host: NVMe over Fibre Channel Limits

Host: NVMe over RDMA Limits

Host: NVMe over TCP Limits

Host: iSCSI Limits

Ethernet Session Limits

Host: SAS Limits

Replication and HA: Policy-Based Limits

IP (long distances using TCP) Partnership Limits

IP (short distances using RDMA) Partnership Limits

Snapshot and FlashCopy Limits

External Storage System Limits

System and User Management Limits

Event Notification Limits

REST API Limits

Extent Tables

Volume Capacity

Mdisk Capacity

Product Lookup

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