Announcing: New Larger Content Database Size Limits and RBS Clarifications

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Today we are updating the SharePoint Boundaries and Limits document on TechNet with larger content database size limits and we are clarifying the value in Remote Blob Storage (RBS). With these changes to the SharePoint software boundaries the discussion of scale limits moves to other areas such as appropriate hardware, SQL Server configuration, disk IO bandwidth, planning and pre-production testing.

Full details are on the SharePoint team blog here. Key changes:

  1. The 200 GB content database size limit is being increased to 4 TB with new requirements and considerations to help customers successfully scale to larger storage sizes. The old 200 GB content database size limit is still supported with no additional requirements for consistency.
  2. For document center and records center site templates with more strict requirements outlined in the Boundaries and Limits document there is no explicit content database size limit.
  3. All known issues with large content database sizes are detailed in the boundaries and limits document. This empowers customers to make their own decisions about how to implement their systems.
  4. We are clarifying that Remote Blob Storage (RBS) does not offer a way to increase the SharePoint content database size limits. The content database supported size limits apply to the sum of data stored in SQL Server plus data stored outside of SQL Server using an RBS provider. A description and the value of RBS is detailed in the team blog post.
  5. The Microsoft SQL Server FILESTREAM RBS provider is now supported allowing for iSCSI connections to lower cost NAS storage. The SQL Server RBS provider is one option for RBS use with SharePoint and there are a number of ISV’s who also have RBS providers.

As part of the work required to increase these limits we have completed scale lab testing with a SharePoint farm with two content databases with a total of 30 TB of data across 120 million items. A report on this scale lab will be published in the near future.

Feel free to post a comment on this blog if you have any questions about this and I'll answer them.