SharePoint 2010 RBS and the 200GB content database limit

Question

So "SharePoint Server 2010 capacity management: Software boundaries and limits" says about the 200GB limit:

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.

The official FAQ: SharePoint 2010 Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) unfortunately doesn't explain my question:

When I store blobs via the SQL FILESTREAM RBS provider (that would mean that those files are stored somewhere locally on C:\files), the content database is rather small (as there are only references to the BLOBs), correct?

Does Microsoft mean with the above quote that the content database still has to be below 200GB, but if you have 600TB of data on C:\files and reference them via RBS and said content DB everything is good?
In other words: Can I have more content than 200GB with RBS when the content DB stays below 200GB?

Answer 1

Short answer, the quote above does say RBS and the content database must not exceed the limit. Not just the content DB when RBS is used.

Database size is such a gray area with SharePoint. MS's recommendation of 200GB is to ease the maintenance of the database.

"Content databases exceeding 200 GB and up to 4 TB support much of the same flexibility as content databases <200 GB. However, additional planning should be considered in order to effectively manage those databases in respect to operational and hardware considerations."

from Managing Multi-Terabyte Content Databases with Microsoft SharePoint 2010

Answer 2

MS recommends a 200 GB size limit for each content DB. The article you mentioned is baddy wording the recommendation.

RBS is a remedy to content DBs growing extremely large.

Using RBS, will allow you to move the unstructured data (BLOBs) out of the content DBs. So this will shrink your content DBs tremendously. That means you have a content DB that has size of 200 GB that references BLOBs on a file system with a size of, let say, 1 TB.