I have a 16-disk Array (80TB) and also run a VM Win10. No dockers and the array serves as file server. I will probably install owncloud docker shortly and potentially play around one day to have sabnzbd or itunes server in dockers as well.

 

I have 32GB ram and currently have assigned 4GB to Unraid and 28GB to the VM. Does this make sense and/or should I install more/less to Unraid instead? Would I benefit from more ram?

I have mine split 16/16. Nothing I run on Windows is that memory intensive, and I do run a fair number of Dockers. I'd back it down for a week and see if your VM performance is negatively impacted. If so, raise it. But if not, I'd give it to unRaid.

Running a VM has an overhead (typically around 1GB I believe) and this has to be allowed for as well in any calculations.

Thanks. Where is the VM overhead used? As part of Unraid dedicated Ram or VM dedicated Ram?

 

Thanks for your suggestion to increase Unraid dedicated Ram? I am just curious whether and what Unraid would even use it for? Faster parity building? Faster file driver? Faster network transfers? Better VM management?

Caching writes to drives would be one use.  I'm sure there are many more.

Yes, disk caching is a big one, which can buffer writes to the array. That memory is also available to create new VMs and/or available to existing or new Dockers.