Consider the following limitations when creating non-default partitions:
Once a new partition configuration is successfully committed using the smpartition command on the current master SM, the configuration is kept highly available among the defined set of SM instances. However, all Sun Network QDR InfiniBand Gateway Switches defined to have SM enabled (that is, defined by the smnodes command on each gateway switch) must be operational and able to communicate with the other smnodes gateway switches in order for any change in the partition configuration to take place.
The limitation for number of partitions per end-port is a constraint defined by the various end-port implementations. For ConnectX2 and BridgeX, this limit is 128, which includes the default partition. Hence the maximum number of other partitions is 127. The CLI interface of the gateway switch does not verify this explicitly. However, if you specify partitions more than the maximum limit for any port (GUID), the SM only handles the maximum number of partitions and then logs a message.