SharePoint 2013 boundaries, thresholds and limitations

It is at most important to any administrator to know the boundaries, thresholds and limitations of any software you use during capacity planning stage itself for the smooth ride later.

Any SharePoint version has the following hierarchy - Web Application, Content Databases, Site Collections, lists & libraries, columns. Each one of them has limitations by design and also by configurations. Following lists them by hierarchy.

   1.  Web Applications  

Limit	Maximum value
Number of content databases	500 per farm
Content database size (general              usage scenarios)	200 GB per content           database
Content database size (all usage            scenarios)	4 TB per content database

2.  Content Databases        Limit Maximum value        Number of content databases 500 per farm        Content database size(general usage        scenarios) 200 GB per content database        Content database size (all usage                scenarios) 4 TB per content database        Content database size (document              archive scenario) No explicit content database limit        Content database items 60 million items including documents and list items       Site collections per content database 10,000 maximum (2,500 non-Personal site collections and 7,500 Personal Sites, or 10,000 Personal Sites alone)      Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) storage     subsystem on Network Attached         Storage (NAS) When SharePoint Server 2013 is configured to use RBS, and the BLOBs reside on NAS storage, consider the following boundary. From the time that SharePoint Server 2013 requests a BLOB, until it receives the first byte from the NAS, no more than 20 milliseconds can pass.

3.  Site Collection Limits      Limit Maximum value      Site collections per farm 750,000 (500,000 Personal Sites and 250,000 other sites per farm)      Web site 250,000 per site collection      Site collection size Maximum size of the content database      Number of device channels per           publishing site collection 10

4.  Lists and Library Limits

Limit	Maximum value
List row size	8,000 bytes per row
File size	2 GB
Documents	30,000,000 per library
Major versions	400000
Minor versions	511
Items	30,000,000 per list
Rows size limit	6 table rows internal to the database used for a list or library item
Bulk operations	100 items per bulk operation
List view lookup threshold	8 join operations per query
List view threshold	5000
List view threshold for auditors and administrators	20000
Subsite	2,000 per site view
Coauthoring in Word and PowerPoint for .docx, .pptx   and .ppsx files	10 concurrent editors per document

Security scope

50,000 per list

5. Column Limits

Limit	Maximum value
Single line of text	276
Multiple Lines of Text	192
Choice	276
Number	72
Currency	72
Date and Time	48
Lookup	96
Yes / No	96
Person or group	96
Hyperlink or picture	138
Calculated	48
GUID	6
Int	96
Managed metadata	94

Did you know?

We all know that there are two recycle bins in SharePoint and we also know about Site collection quotas.

But do you know that stage two recycle bin doesn't count towards site collection quota? Yes it doesn't count towards site collection quota. Stage two recycle bin quota is set depending on site collection quota. By default  stage two recycle bin quota = 50% of site collection quota.

So it is very important to set the site collection quota.