You can assign an ACL name or number to an interface even if the ACL does not exist in the switch configuration

In this case, if you subsequently create an ACL with that name or number, the switch automatically applies each ACE as soon as you enter it in the running-config file. Similarly, if you modify an existing ACE in an ACL you already applied to an interface, the switch automatically implements the new ACE as soon as you enter it. The switch allows up to 2048 ACLs each for IPv4 and determines the total from the number of unique ACL names in the configuration. For example, if you configure two ACLs, but assign only one of them to a VLAN, the ACL total is two, for the two unique ACL names. If you then assign the name of a nonexistent ACL to a VLAN, the new ACL total is three, because the switch now has three unique ACL names in its configuration. (RADIUS-based ACL resources are drawn from the IPv4 allocation).

(For a summary of ACL resource limits, see the appendix covering scalability in the latest management and configuration guide for your switch.)