• The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
Menu
  • The Four Hundred
  • Subscribe
  • Media Kit
  • Contributors
  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Pushing The Capacity Envelopes With IBM i 7.3

    April 9, 2018 Timothy Prickett Morgan

    Every piece of systems software has some sort of maximum capabilities reference, and these documents are interesting in their own right to help system administrators, programmers, and database administrators, as they case may be, figure out where they might hit a ceiling in terms of capacity or performance.

    IBM has just published the Availability Maximum Capacities reference for IBM i Version 7 Release 3, which you can take a gander at here. As this reference correctly points out, coming close to the performance limits – or many of them at the same time – can cause outages. In this, we learn that up to 128 machines can be configured in a cluster, but which we presume that IBM means DB2 Multisystem, a database clustering technique that is over two decades old and that is akin to the Parallel Sysplex on its System z mainframes.

    We also learn that the OptiConnect fibre optic links between cluster nodes can address up to 64 partitions, which is a neat limit, and that the TCP/IP stack, which IBM i inherits from AIX through a PASE runtime, can address around 100,000 configured objects and can have 65,535 ports and routes per system, and the alternative Systems Network Architecture (SNA) stack still lurks inside of IBM i and up to 25,300 peer-to-peer devices can be configured to an IBM i instance. I doubt very much anyone is even close to these theoretical limits. IBM i can have 15 system libraries and 250 user libraries, and no more than that, and there can be a maximum number of 1 million objects in a library and 2.15 billion objects across the root, QOpenSys, and user defined file systems in the Auxiliary Storage Pools (ASPs) number 1 through 32 on a single machine. The machine can, in theory, have 2.15 billion jobs in a subsystem, up to 32,767 of them can be active at the same time, and it can have no more than 35,600 disk arms and no more than 223 ASPs and a maximum load source size of 2 TB. No partition can have more than 64 TB of main memory, and no more than 192 processors with four threads each can be linked into a single NUMA image.

    There’s a lot more in there, of course. These are just the ones I initially found interesting. It seems unlikely that many of these limits will change much in the coming years. But you never know.

    RELATED STORIES

    New IBM i Technology Refreshes Announced; Available Mid-March

    IBM i Strategy: Technology Choices And The Vendor Ecosystem

    Investment And Integration Indicators For IBM i

    TRs for IBM i 7.3 and 7.2: Enhancements, No Big Surprises

    SQL And Database Shine As Next Tech Refresh Approaches

    Overdue Upgrades Perplex IBM i Shops

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    Tags: Tags: AIX, IBM i, NUMA, Technology Refresh, TR

    Sponsored by
    VISUAL LANSA 16 WEBINAR

    Trying to balance stability and agility in your IBM i environment?

    Join this webinar and explore Visual LANSA 16 – our enhanced professional low-code platform designed to help organizations running on IBM i evolve seamlessly for what’s next.

    🎙️VISUAL LANSA 16 WEBINAR

    Break Monolithic IBM i Applications and Unlock New Value

    Explore modernization without rewriting. Decouple monolithic applications and extend their value through integration with modern services, web frameworks, and cloud technologies.

    🗓️ July 10, 2025

    ⏰ 9 AM – 10 AM CDT (4 PM to 5 PM CEST)

    See the webinar schedule in your time zone

    Register to join the webinar now

    What to Expect

    • Get to know Visual LANSA 16, its core features, latest enhancements, and use cases
    • Understand how you can transition to a MACH-aligned architecture to enable faster innovation
    • Discover native REST APIs, WebView2 support, cloud-ready Azure licensing, and more to help transform and scale your IBM i applications

    Read more about V16 here.

    Share this:

    • Reddit
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Email

    30 Years And Just Getting Started: IBM i Celebration Looks Ahead COMMON Changes Things Up With PowerUp 2018

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

TFH Volume: 28 Issue: 27

This Issue Sponsored By

  • Fresche Solutions
  • New Generation Software
  • Harkins & Associates
  • Computer Keyes
  • COMMON

Table of Contents

  • Counting The Cost Of IBM i On Power9 Entry Systems
  • What A Concept: Distribution Software Aimed At Real SMBs
  • Guru: Dealing With Non-Normalized Data
  • COMMON Changes Things Up With PowerUp 2018
  • Pushing The Capacity Envelopes With IBM i 7.3

Content archive

  • The Four Hundred
  • Four Hundred Stuff
  • Four Hundred Guru

Recent Posts

  • With Power11, Power Systems “Go To Eleven”
  • With Subscription Price, IBM i P20 And P30 Tiers Get Bigger Bundles
  • Izzi Buys CNX, Eyes Valence Port To System Z
  • IBM i Shops “Attacking” Security Concerns, Study Shows
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 26
  • Liam Allan Shares What’s Coming Next With Code For IBM i
  • From Stable To Scalable: Visual LANSA 16 Powers IBM i Growth – Launching July 8
  • VS Code Will Be The Heart Of The Modern IBM i Platform
  • The AS/400: A 37-Year-Old Dog That Loves To Learn New Tricks
  • IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 25

Subscribe

To get news from IT Jungle sent to your inbox every week, subscribe to our newsletter.

Pages

  • About Us
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Four Hundred Monitor
  • IBM i PTF Guide
  • Media Kit
  • Subscribe

Search

Copyright © 2025 IT Jungle