[vbox-dev] Docs Review: VirtualBox Limits

[Alexey Eromenko]

Hello,

All other serious virtualizers have published their limits, except
VirtualBox. (KVM, VMware ESX and Hyper-V)

Example Hyper-V docs:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee405267(WS.10).aspx

Even open-source projects, such as Wikipedia treat VirtualBox not
seriously; Their reviewer reverted my updates twice (!) and after
speaking with him, he demanded official documentation, before he
allows me to modify wikipedia. Yay !
I decided to publish my (incomplete) knowledge, in the form of patch
for VirtualBox manual.

Here is my first "Request For Comments" patch for VirtualBox Limits,
please review:

--- /home/user/Linstall/1/vbox/doc/manual/en_US/user_KnownIssues.xml
 2011-05-04 12:11:30.000000000 -0400
+++ /home/user/Linstall/vbox/doc/manual/en_US/user_KnownIssues.xml
 2011-05-14 23:48:29.000000000 -0400
@@ -2,7 +2,51 @@
 <!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
 "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd">
 <chapter id="KnownIssues">
-  <title>Known limitations</title>
+  <title>Known limits and limitations</title>
+
+  <sect1>
+    <title>Known limits</title>
+    <para>To consider serious deployment of VirtualBox, you should be
aware of it's technical limits, both host-side and guest-side
related.</para>
+    <itemizedlist>
+    <listitem>
+      <para>Host: (per Physical Machine limits)</para>
+      <itemizedlist>
+          <listitem><para>Max. Processors: 256 logical CPUs
(Linux/Solaris 64-bit and 32-bit hosts)
+          <footnote><para>Logical CPU means physical CPU, processor
core, CPU hardware thread, or any combination
thereof.</para></footnote>
+          </para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Max. Processors: 32 logical CPUs (Windows
64-bit and 32-bit hosts)</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>RAM: 16 TiB (on 64-bit hosts)</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>RAM: 64 GiB (on 32-bit hosts)</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Number of concurrently running virtual
machines: 8192 VMs (Linux 64-bit, but on standard kernels up to 127
VMs)</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Number of concurrently running virtual
machines: 128 VMs (Linux 32-bit)</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Host-only Networks: 8</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Bridged/Internal Networks: not limited by
VirtualBox</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>NAT/VDE/UDP Tunnel networks: not limited
by VirtualBox</para></listitem>
+      </itemizedlist>
+
+      </listitem>
+
+    <listitem>
+      <para>Guests: (per Virtual Machine limits)</para>
+      <itemizedlist>
+          <listitem><para>Max. Processors per guest: 32 Cores</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>RAM per guest: 2 TiB (on 64-bit
hosts)</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>RAM per guest: 3.5 GiB (on 32-bit
hosts)</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>vNICs per guest: 8</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>vMonitors per guest: 8</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>vHDDs per guest: 4 IDE + 30
SATA/SCSI/SAS</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Max. vHDD size: 2 TiB</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Floppy devices: 2</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Serial Ports: 2</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Shared Folders: not limited by
VirtualBox</para></listitem>
+          <listitem><para>Snapshots: not limited by
VirtualBox</para></listitem>
+      </itemizedlist>
+    </listitem>
+    </itemizedlist>
+  </sect1>
+
+  <sect1>
+    <title>Known limitations</title>

   <para>This sections describes known problems with VirtualBox
   $VBOX_VERSION_STRING. Unless marked otherwise, these issues are planned to
@@ -208,4 +252,5 @@
       due to inherent limitations of the OS/2 graphics system.</para>
     </listitem>
   </itemizedlist>
+  </sect1>
 </chapter>

-- 
-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"