Capacity management - Project Server limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
End of project time	Date: 12/31/2049	Boundary	Project plans cannot extend past the date 12/31/2049.
Deliverables per project plan	1,500 deliverables	Boundary	Project plans cannot contain more than 1,500 deliverables.
Number of fields in a view	256	Boundary	A user cannot have more than 256 fields added to a view that they have defined in Project Web App.
Number of clauses in a filter for a view	50	Boundary	A user cannot add a filter to a view that has more than 50 clauses in it.

Capacity Management - Office Web Application Service limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Cache size	100 GB	Threshold	Space available to render documents, created as part of a content database. By default, the cache available to render documents is 100 GB. We do not recommend that you increase the available cache.
Renders	One per document per second per CPU core per application server (maximum eight cores)	Boundary	This is the measured average number of renders that can be performed of "typical" documents on the application server over a period of time.

Capacity management - OneNote limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Number of Sections and Section Groups in a OneNote Notebook (on SharePoint)	See limit for "Documents" in List and library limits		Each section counts as one folder and one document in the list. Each section group counts as one folder and one document in the list.
Maximum size of a section	See limit for "File size" in List and library limits		This maximum excludes any images, embedded files, and XPS printouts to OneNote that are larger than 100 KB. Images and embedded files larger than 100 KB are split out into their own binary files. This means that a section with 100 KB of typed data and four embedded Word documents of 1 MB each will be considered a 100 KB section.
Maximum size of an image, embedded file, and XPS OneNote printout in a OneNote section.	See limit for "File size" in List and library limits		Each item is stored as a separate binary file and is therefore subject to file size limits. Each print operation to OneNote will result in one XPS printout binary, even if the printout contains multiple pages.
Maximum size of all images, embedded files, and XPS printouts in a single OneNote page.	Default limit is double the "File size" limit.	Threshold	This applies to embedded content in a single OneNote page, not a Section or Notebook. If users encounter this, they will see the following error in OneNote: jerrcStorageUrl_HotTableFull (0xE0000794). Users can work around this by splitting embedded content into different pages and deleting previous versions of the page. If users have to adjust this value (“Max Hot Table Size”), the effective limit is half of the absolute value they define (for example, specifying a 400 MB max hot table size means that the maximum size of all embedded content on a page is limited to 200 MB).
Merge operations	One per CPU core per Web server	Boundary	OneNote merges combine changes from multiple users who are co-authoring a notebook. If no CPU core is available to run a merge, a conflict page is generated instead, which forces the user perform the merge manually). This limit applies whether OneNote is running as a client application or as a Microsoft Office Web Apps.

Capacity management - SharePoint Workspace limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
SharePoint Workspace synchronization	30,000 items per list	Boundary	SharePoint Workspace will not synchronize lists that have more than 30,000 items. This restriction exists because the time to download a list that has more than 30,000 items is very long, and resource usage is high.
SharePoint Workspace synchronization	1800 documents limit in SharePoint Workspace	Boundary	Users are warned when they have more than 500 documents in SharePoint Workspace, but they can continue to add documents.

Capacity Management - Word Automation Services limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Input file Size	512 MB	Boundary	Maximum file size that can be processed by Word Automation Services.
Frequency with which to start conversions (minutes)	1 minute (recommended) 15 minutes (default) 59 minutes (boundary)	Threshold	This setting determines how often the Word Automation Services timer job executes. A lower number leads to the timer job running faster. Our testing shows that it is most useful to run this timer job once per minute.
Number of conversions to start per conversion process	For PDF/XPS output formats: 30 x MFor all other output formats: 72 x M Where M is the value of Frequency with which to start conversions (minutes)	Threshold	The number of conversions to start affects the throughput of Word Automation Services. If these values are set higher than the recommended levels then some conversion items may start to fail intermittently and user permissions may expire. User permissions expire 24 hours from the time that a conversion job is started.
Conversion job size	100,000 conversion items	Supported	A conversion job includes one or more conversion items, each of which represents a single conversion to be performed on a single input file in SharePoint. When a conversion job is started (using the ConversionJob.Start method), the conversion job and all conversion items are transmitted over to an application server which then stores the job in the Word Automation Services database. A large number of conversion items will increase both the execution time of the Start method and the number of bytes transmitted to the application server.
Total active conversion processes	N-1, where N is the number of cores on each application server	Threshold	An active conversion process can consume a single processing core. Therefore, customers should not run more conversion processes than they have processing cores in their application servers.  The conversion timer job and other SharePoint activities also require occasional use of a processing core. We recommend that you always leave 1 core free for use by the conversion timer job and SharePoint.
Word Automation Services database size	2 million conversion items	Supported	Word Automation Services maintains a persistent queue of conversion items in its database. Each conversion request generates one or more records. Word Automation Services does not delete records from the database automatically, so the database can grow indefinitely without maintenance. Administrators can manually remove conversion job history by using the Windows PowerShell cmdlet Remove-SPWordConversionServiceJobHistory.

Capacity management - PerformancePoint Services limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Cells	1,000,000 per query on Excel Services data source	Boundary	A PerformancePoint scorecard that calls an Excel Services data source is subject to a limit of no more than 1,000,000 cells per query.
Columns and rows	15 columns by 60,000 rows	Threshold	The maximum number of columns and rows when rendering any PerformancePoint dashboard object that uses a Microsoft Excel workbook as a data source. The number of rows could change based on the number of columns.
Query on a SharePoint list	15 columns by 5,000 rows	Supported	The maximum number of columns and row when rendering any PerformancePoint dashboard object that uses a SharePoint list as a data source. The number of rows could change based on the number of columns.
Query on a SQL Server data source	15 columns by 20,000 rows	Supported	The maximum number of columns and row when rendering any PerformancePoint dashboard object that uses a SQL Server table data source. The number of rows could change based on the number of columns.

Capacity Management - SharePoint Web Analytics service limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
SharePoint entities	30,000 per farm when Web Analytics is enabled	Supported	Do not enable Web Analytics if your farm contains, or is expected to contain, more than 30,000 SharePoint entities, which include all Web applications, site collections, and sites. This number is not exact, because different combinations of SharePoint entities might have a greater or lesser effect on farm performance than the tested scenario,  However, as the number of SharePoint entities in your farm closely approaches this limit, farm performance might fall to unacceptable levels.

Capacity Management - Visio Services limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
File size of Visio Web drawings	50 MB	Threshold	Visio Services has a configuration setting that enables the administrator to change the maximum size of Web drawings that Visio processes. Larger file sizes have the following side effects: Increase in the memory footprint of Visio Services. Increase in CPU usage. Reduction in application server requests per second. Increase overall latency. Increase SharePoint farm network load
Visio Web drawing recalculation time-out	120 seconds	Threshold	Visio Services has a configuration setting that enables the administrator to change the maximum time that it can spend recalculating a drawing after a data refresh. A larger recalculation time-out leads to: Reduction in CPU and memory availability. Reduction in application requests per second. Increase in average latency across all documents. A smaller recalculation time-out leads to: Reduction of the complexity of diagrams that can be displayed. Increase in requests per second. Decrease in average latency across all documents.
Visio Services minimum cache age (data connected diagrams)	Minimum cache age: 0 to 24hrs	Threshold	Minimum cache age applies to data connected diagrams. It determines the earliest point at which the current diagram can be removed from cache. Setting Min Cache Age to a very low value will reduce throughput and increase latency, because invalidating the cache too often forces Visio to recalculate often and reduces CPU and memory availability.
Visio Services maximum cache age (non-data connected diagrams)	Maximum cache age: 0 to 24hrs	Threshold	Maximum cache age applies to non-data connected diagrams. This value determines how long to keep the current diagram in memory. Increasing Max Cache Age decreases latency for commonly requested drawings. However, setting Max Cache Age to a very high value increases latency and slows throughput for items that are not cached, because the items already in cache consume and reduce available memory.

Capacity Management - Managed Metadata term store (database) limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Maximum number of levels of nested terms in a term store	7	Supported	Terms in a term set can be represented hierarchically.  A term set can have up to seven levels of terms (a parent term, and six levels of nesting below it.)
Maximum number of term sets in a term store	1,000	Supported	You can have up to 1,000 term sets in a term store.
Maximum number of terms in a term set	30,000	Supported	30,000 is the maximum number of terms in a term set.   Note: Additional labels for the same term, such as synonyms and translations, do not count as separate terms.
Total number of items in a term store	1,000,000	Supported	An item is either a term or a term set. The sum of the number of terms and term sets cannot exceed 1,000,000. Additional labels for the same term, such as synonyms and translations, do not count as separate terms.   Note: You cannot have both the maximum number of term sets and the maximum number of terms simultaneously in a term store.

Capacity management - Workflow limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Workflow postpone threshold	15	Threshold	15 is the maximum number of workflows allowed to be executing against a content database at the same time, excluding instances that are running in the timer service. When this threshold is reached, new requests to activate workflows will be queued to be run by the workflow timer service later. As non-timer execution is completed, new requests will count against this threshold. This is limit can be configured by using the Set-SPFarmConfig Windows PowerShell cmdlet. Note: This limit does not refer to the total number of workflow instances that can be in progress. Instead, it is the number of instances that are being processed. Increasing this limit increases the throughput of starting and completing workflow tasks but also increases load against the content database and system resources.
Workflow timer batch size	100	Threshold	The number of events that each run of the workflow timer job will pick up and deliver to workflows. It is configurable by using Windows PowerShell. To allow for additional events, you can run additional instances of the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service.

Capacity Management - Business Connectivity Services limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
ECT (in-memory)	5,000 per Web server (per tenant)	Boundary	Total number of external content type (ECT) definitions loaded in memory at a given point in time on a Web server.
External system connections	500 per Web server	Boundary	Number of active/open external system connections at a given point in time. The default maximum value is 200; the boundary is 500. This limit is enforced at the Web Server scope, regardless of the kind of external system (for example, database, .NET assembly, and so on) The default maximum is used to restrict the number of connections. An application can specify a larger limit via execution context; the boundary enforces the maximum even for applications that do not respect the default.
Database items returned per request	2,000 per database connector	Threshold	Number of items per request the database connector can return. The default maximum of 2,000 is used by the database connector to restrict the number of result that can be returned per page. The application can specify a larger limit via execution context; the Absolute Max enforces the maximum even for applications that do not respect the default. The boundary for this limit is 1,000,000

Capacity Management - Blog limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Blog posts	5,000 per site	Supported	The maximum number of blog posts is 5,000 per site.
Comments	1,000 per post	Supported	The maximum number of comments is 1,000 per post.

Capacity Management - Content deployment limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Content deployment jobs running on different paths	20	Supported	For concurrently running jobs on paths that are connected to site collections in the same source content database, there is an increased risk of deadlocks on the database. For jobs that must run concurrently, we recommend that you move the site collections into different source content databases.   Note: Concurrent running jobs on the same path are not possible. If you are using SQL Server snapshots for content deployment, each path creates a snapshot. This increases the I/O requirements for the source database.

Capacity Management - User Profile Service limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
User profiles	2,000,000 per service application	Supported	A user profile service application can support up to 2 million user profiles with full social features functionality. This number represents the number of profiles that can be imported into the people profile store from a directory service, and also the number of profiles a user profile service application can support without leading to performance decreases in social features.
Social tags, notes and ratings	500,000,000 per social database	Supported	Up to 500 million total social tags, notes and ratings are supported in a social database without significant decreases in performance. However, database maintenance operations such as backup and restore may show decreased performance at that point.

Capacity Management - Search limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
SharePoint search service applications	20 per farm	Supported	Multiple SharePoint search service applications can be deployed on the same farm, because you can assign search components and databases to separate servers. The recommended limit of 20 is less than the maximum limit for all service applications in a farm.
Crawl databases and database Items	10 crawl databases per search service application 25 million items per crawl database	Threshold	The crawl database stores the crawl data (time/status, etc.) about all items that have been crawled. The supported limit is 10 crawl databases per SharePoint Search service application. The recommended limit is 25 million items per crawl database (or a total of four crawl databases per search service application).
Crawl components	16 per search service application	Threshold	The recommended limit per application is 16 total crawl components; with two per crawl database, and two per server, assuming the server has at least eight processors (cores). The total number of crawl components per server must be less than 128/(total query components) to minimize propagation I/O degradation. Exceeding the recommended limit may not increase crawl performance; in fact, crawl performance may decrease based on available resources on the crawl server, database, and content host.
Index partitions	20 per search service application; 128 total	Threshold	The index partition holds a subset of the search service application index. The recommended limit is 20. Increasing the number of index partitions results in each partition holding a smaller subset of the index, reducing the RAM and disk space that is needed on the query server hosting the query component assigned to the index partition. The boundary for the total number of index partitions is 128.
Indexed items	100 million per search service application; 10 million per index partition	Supported	SharePoint Search supports index partitions, each of which contains a subset of the search index. The recommended maximum is 10 million items in any partition. The overall recommended maximum number of items (e.g., people, list items, documents, Web pages) is 100 million.
Crawl log entries	100 million per search application	Supported	This is the number of individual log entries in the crawl log. It will follow the "Indexed items" limit.
Property databases	10 per search service application;128 total	Threshold	The property database stores the metadata for items in each index partition associated with it. An index partition can only be associated with one property store. The recommended limit is 10 property databases per search service application. The boundary for index partitions is 128.
Query components	128 per search application; 64/(total crawl components) per server	Threshold	The total number of query components is limited by the ability of the crawl components to copy files. The maximum number of query components per server is limited by the ability of the query components to absorb files propagated from crawl components.
Scope rules	100 scope rules per scope; 600 total per search service application	Threshold	Exceeding this limit will reduce crawl freshness, and delay potential results from scoped queries.
Scopes	200 site scopes and 200 shared scopes per search service application	Threshold	Exceeding this limit may reduce crawl efficiency and, if the scopes are added to the display group, affect end-user browser latency. Also, display of the scopes in the search administration interface degrades as the number of scopes passes the recommended limit.
Display groups	25 per site	Threshold	Display groups are used for a grouped display of scopes through the user interface. Exceeding this limit starts degrading the scope experience in the search administration interface.
Alerts	1,000,000 per search application	Supported	This is the tested limit.
Content sources	50 per search service application	Threshold	The recommended limit of 50 can be exceeded up to the boundary of 500 per search service application. However, fewer start addresses should be used, and the concurrent crawl limit must be followed.
Start addresses	100 per content source	Threshold	The recommended limit can be exceeded up to the boundary of 500 per content source. However, the more start addresses you have, the fewer content sources should be used. When you have many start address, we recommend that you put them as links on an html page, and have the HTTP crawler crawl the page, following the links.
Concurrent crawls	20 per search application	Threshold	This is the number of crawls underway at the same time. Exceeding this number may cause the overall crawl rate to decrease.
Crawled properties	500,000 per search application	Supported	These are properties that are discovered during a crawl.
Crawl impact rule	100	Threshold	Recommended limit of 100 per farm. The recommendation can be exceeded; however, display of the site hit rules in the search administration interface is degraded. At approximately 2,000 site hit rules, the Manage Site Hit Rules page becomes unreadable.
Crawl rules	100 per search service application	Threshold	This value can be exceeded; however, display of the crawl rules in the search administration interface is degraded.
Managed properties	100,000 per search service application	Threshold	These are properties used by the search system in queries. Crawled properties are mapped to managed properties.
Mappings	100 per managed property	Threshold	Exceeding this limit may decrease crawl speed and query performance.
URL removals	100 removals per operation	Supported	This is the maximum recommended number of URLs that should be removed from the system in one operation.
Authoritative pages	1 top level and minimal second and third level pages per search service application	Threshold	The recommended limit is one top-level authoritative page, and as few second -and third-level pages as possible to achieve the desired relevance. The boundary is 200 per relevance level per search application, but adding additional pages may not achieve the desired relevance. Add the key site to the first relevance level. Add more key sites at either second or third relevance levels, one at a time, and evaluate relevance after each addition to ensure that the desired relevance effect is achieved.
Keywords	200 per site collection	Supported	The recommended limit can be exceeded up to the maximum (ASP.NET-imposed) limit of 5,000 per site collection given five Best Bets per keyword. If you exceed this limit, display of keywords on the site administration user interface will degrade. The ASP.NET-imposed limit can be modified by editing the Web.Config and Client.config files (MaxItemsInObjectGraph).
Metadata properties recognized	10,000 per item crawled	Boundary	This is the number of metadata properties that can be determined and potentially mapped or used for queries when an item is crawled.

Capacity Management - Security limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Number of SharePoint groups a user can belong to	5,000	Supported	This is not a hard limit but it is consistent with Active Directory guidelines. There are several things that affect this number: The size of the user token The groups cache: SharePoint Server 2010 has a table that caches the number of groups a user belongs to as soon as those groups are used in access control lists (ACLs). The security check time: as the number of groups that a user is a member of increases, the time that is required for the access check increases also.
Users in a site collection	2 million per site collection	Supported	You can add millions of people to your Web site by using Microsoft Windows security groups to manage security instead of using individual users. This limit is based on manageability and ease of navigation in the user interface. When you have many entries (security groups of users) in the site collection (more than one thousand), you should use Windows PowerShell to manage users instead of the UI. This will provide a better management experience.
Active Directory Principles/Users in a SharePoint group	5,000 per SharePoint group	Supported	SharePoint Server 2010 enables you to add users or Active Directory groups to a SharePoint group. Having up to 5,000 users (or Active Directory groups or users) in a SharePoint group provides acceptable performance. The activities most affected by this limit are as follows: Fetching users to validate permissions. This operation takes incrementally longer with growth in number of users in a group. Rendering the membership of the view. This operation will always require time.
SharePoint groups	10,000 per site collection	Supported	Above 10,000 groups, the time to execute operations is increased significantly. This is especially true of adding a user to an existing group, creating a new group, and rendering group views.
Security principal: size of the Security Scope	5,000 per Access Control List (ACL)	Supported	The size of the scope affects the data that is used for a security check calculation. This calculation occurs every time that the scope changes. There is no hard limit, but the bigger the scope, the longer the calculation takes.

Capacity Management - Page limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Web parts	25 per wiki or Web part page	Threshold	This figure is an estimate based on simple Web Parts. The complexity of the Web parts dictates how many Web Parts can be used on a page before performance is affected.

Capacity management - List and library limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
List row size	8,000 bytes per row	Boundary	Each list or library item can only occupy 8,000 bytes in total in the database. 256 bytes are reserved for built-in columns, which leaves 7,744 bytes for end-user columns.
File size	2 GB	Boundary	The default maximum file size is 50 MB. This can be increased up to 2 GB, however a large volume of very large files can affect farm performance.
Documents	30,000,000 per library	Supported	You can create very large document libraries by nesting folders, or using standard views and site hierarchy. This value may vary depending on how documents and folders are organized, and by the type and size of documents stored.
Major versions	400,000	Supported	If you exceed this limit, basic file operations—such as file open or save, delete, and viewing the version history— may not succeed.
Items	30,000,000 per list	Supported	You can create very large lists using standard views, site hierarchies, and metadata navigation. This value may vary depending on the number of columns in the list and the usage of the list.
Rows size limit	6 table rows internal to the database used for a list or library item	Supported	Specifies the maximum number of table rows internal to the database that can be used for a list or library item. To accommodate wide lists with many columns, each item may be wrapped over several internal table rows, up to six rows by default. This is configurable by farm administrators through the object model only.
Bulk operations	100 items per bulk operation	Boundary	The user interface allows a maximum of 100 items to be selected for bulk operations.
List view lookup threshold	8 join operations per query	Threshold	Specifies the maximum number of joins allowed per query, such as those based on lookup, person/group, or workflow status columns. If the query uses more than eight joins, the operation is blocked. This does not apply to single item operations. When using the maximal view via the object model (by not specifying any view fields), SharePoint will return up to the first eight lookups.
List view threshold	5,000	Threshold	Specifies the maximum number of list or library items that a database operation, such as a query, can process at the same time outside the daily time window set by the administrator during which queries are unrestricted.
List view threshold for auditors and administrators	20,000	Threshold	Specifies the maximum number of list or library items that a database operation, such as a query, can process at the same time when they are performed by an auditor or administrator with appropriate permissions. This setting works with Allow Object Model Override.
Subsite	2,000 per site view	Threshold	The interface for enumerating subsites of a given Web site does not perform well as the number of subsites surpasses 2,000. Similarly, the All Site Content page and the Tree View Control performance will decrease significantly as the number of subsites grows.
Coauthoring in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint for .docx, .pptx and .ppsx files	10 concurrent editors per document	Threshold	Recommended maximum number of concurrent editors is 10. The boundary is 99. If there are 99 co-authors who have a single document opened for concurrent editing, any user after the 100th user sees a "File in use" error and have to view a read-only copy. More than 10 co-editors will lead to a gradually degraded user experience with more conflicts and users will have to go through more iterations to get their changes to upload successfully.
Security scope	1,000 per list	Threshold	The maximum number of unique security scopes set for a list should not exceed 1,000. A scope is the security boundary for a securable object and any of its children that do not have a separate security boundary defined. A scope contains an Access Control List (ACL), but unlike NTFS ACLs, a scope can include security principals that are specific to SharePoint Server. The members of an ACL for a scope can include Windows users, user accounts other than Windows users (such as forms-based accounts), Active Directory groups, or SharePoint groups.

Capacity Management - Site collection limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Web site	250,000 per site collection	Supported	The maximum recommended number of sites and subsites is 250,000 sites. You can create a very large total number of Web sites by nesting subsites. For example, in a shallow hierarchy with 100 sites, each with 1,000 subsites, you would have a total of 100,000 Web sites. Or a deep hierarchy with 100 sites, each with 10 subsite levels would also contain a total of 100,000 Web sites. Note: Deleting or creating a site or subsite can significantly affect a site’s availability. Access to the site and subsites will be limited while the site is being deleted. Attempting to create many subsites at the same time may also fail.
Site collection size	Maximum size of the content database	Supported	A site collection can be as large as the content database size limit for the applicable usage scenario. For more information about the different content database size limits for specific usage scenarios, In general, we strongly recommend limiting the size of site collections to 100 GB for the following reasons: Certain site collection actions, such as site collection backup/restore or the Windows PowerShell cmdlet Move-SPSite, cause large Microsoft SQL Server operations which can affect performance or fail if other site collections are active in the same database. SharePoint site collection backup and restore is only supported for a maximum site collection size of 100 GB. For larger site collections, the entire content database must be backed up. If multiple site collections larger than 100 GB are contained in a single content database, backup and restore operations can take a long time and are at risk of failure.

Capacity Management - Content database limits

Limit	Maximum value	Limit type	Notes
Content database size (general usage scenarios)	200 GB per content database	Supported	We strongly recommended limiting the size of content databases to 200 GB, except when the circumstances in the following rows in this table apply. If you are using Remote BLOB Storage (RBS), the total volume of remote BLOB storage and metadata in the content database must not exceed this limit.
Content database size (all usage scenarios)	4 TB per content database	Supported	Content databases of up to 4 TB are supported when the following requirements are met: Disk sub-system performance of 0.25 IOPs per GB. 2 IIOPs per GB is recommended for optimal performance. You must have developed plans for high availability, disaster recovery, future capacity, and performance testing. You should also carefully consider the following factors: Requirements for backup and restore may not be met by the native SharePoint Server 2010 backup for content databases larger than 200 GB. It is recommended to evaluate and test SharePoint Server 2010 backup and alternative backup solutions to determine the best solution for your specific environment. It is strongly recommended to have proactive skilled administrator management of the SharePoint Server 2010 and SQL Server installations. The complexity of customizations and configurations on SharePoint Server 2010 may necessitate refactoring (or splitting) of data into multiple content databases. Seek advice from a skilled professional architect and perform testing to determine the optimum content database size for your implementation. Examples of complexity may include custom code deployments, use of more than 20 columns in property promotion, or features listed as not to be used in the over 4 TB section below. Refactoring of site collections allows for scale out of a SharePoint Server 2010 implementation across multiple content databases. This permits SharePoint Server 2010 implementations to scale indefinitely. This refactoring will be easier and faster when content databases are less than 200 GB. It is suggested that for ease of backup and restore that individual site collections within a content database be limited to 100 GB. Important: Content databases of over 4 TB, except for use in document archive scenarios (described in the row below), are not recommended. Upgrading of site collections within these content databases is likely to be very difficult and time consuming. It is strongly recommended that you scale out across multiple content databases, rather than exceed 4 TB of data in a single content database.
Content database size (document archive scenario)	No explicit content database limit	Supported	Content databases with no explicit size limit for use in document archive scenarios are supported when the following requirements are met: You must meet all requirements from the “Content database size (all usage scenarios)” limit earlier in this table, and you should ensure that you have carefully considered all the factors discussed in the Notes field of that limit. SharePoint Server 2010 sites must be based on Document Center or Records Center site templates. Less than 5% of the content in the content database is accessed each month on average, and less than 1% of content is modified or written each month on average. Do not use alerts, workflows, link fix-ups, or item level security on any SharePoint Server 2010 objects in the content database. Note: Document archive content databases can be configured to accept documents from Content Routing workflows.
Content database items	60 million items including documents and list items	Supported	The largest number of items per content database that has been tested on SharePoint Server 2010 is 60 million items, including documents and list items. If you plan to store more than 60 million items in SharePoint Server 2010, you must deploy multiple content databases.
Site collections per content database	2,000 recommended 5,000 maximum	Supported	We strongly recommended limiting the number of site collections in a content database to 2,000. However, up to 5,000 site collections in a database are supported. These limits relate to speed of upgrade. The larger the number of site collections in a database, the slower the upgrade. The limit on the number of site collections in a database is subordinate to the limit on the size of a content database that has more than one site collection (200 GB). Therefore, as the number of site collections in a database increases, the average size of the site collections it contains must decrease. Exceeding the 2,000 site collection limit puts you at risk of longer downtimes during upgrades. If you plan to exceed 2,000 site collections, we recommend that you have a clear upgrade strategy, and obtain additional hardware to speed up upgrades and software updates that affect databases. To set the warning level for the number of sites in a content database, use the Windows PowerShell cmdlet Set-SPContentDatabase with the -WarningSiteCount parameter.
Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) storage subsystem on Network Attached Storage (NAS)	Time to first byte of any response from the NAS cannot exceed 20 milliseconds	Boundary	When SharePoint Server 2010 is configured to use RBS, and the BLOBs reside on NAS storage, consider the following boundary. From the time that SharePoint Server 2010 requests a BLOB, until it receives the first byte from the NAS, no more than 20 milliseconds can pass.