@Tyler_D,
Thanks for your question. The max-series-per-database limit exists only in the inmem
index (the default in 1.x). It exists because the inmem
index can cause the server to OOM if too many series are added to the index. Since it’s rebuilt on startup, and OOMing server can continue to OOM when it restarts, making it operationally difficult to sort out the cardinality problem. The limit was determined based on general query performance at the limit along with heap usage with typical HW. You might want to look into enabling TSI if you haven’t already and you’re dealing with that type of cardinality (it’s the default in 1.7.x +).