Increasing vRA’s Concurrent Provisioning Operations

Automation, Cloud, VMware, vRA2 Comments

I get this question on a weekly basis (at least) – how many concurrent provisioning operations can vRA handle?
…and as soon as I say “2”, i get the [expected] follow up – how can I change that to something ridiculous?

Here’s how:

But first, let’s revisit the blanket statements above because they’re missing a lot of details. The REAL answer is “it depends”. Concurrency primarily depends on which Endpoint is configured, whether or not a proxy agent is used, and what the endpoint itself can handle. The vast majority of vRA customers have at least 1 vSphere Endpoint — which leverages a proxy agent — so I can confidently divulge the default concurrency of 2. Here’s a glimpse of those defaults…

  • Proxy Agent-based (vSphere, XEN, Hyper-V) – 2 per agent
  • DEM-based (all other supported endpoints) – no fixed limit (sort of, see below)

There are a few additional considerations:

  • The number of concurrent workflows per DEM instance. That number is 15 (per DEM).
  • While DEM-based endpoints have no theoretical limit, the DEM workflow concurrency of 15 (per DEM) does apply.
  • Endpoint limits are at play (that is, the endpoints themselves). For example, vSphere 6 can handle 8 concurrent operations by default.
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