RAM allocation

[Blindsay]

Since RAM is crazy expensive right now (DDR4) I am stuck on 16GB for the time being so my question is how much of my RAM can I allocate to VM's. I only have the share itself and VM's running, no docker apps or anything else.

 

I have 3 VM's, Do i have to leave a certain amount unassigned for unraid itself to use?

[DieFalse]

Leave atleast 1gb to unraid.   (recommend 2).  Or don't run all vm's at once.

[Zonediver]

4GB for each VM and 4GB for unraid - done

[itimpi]

Each VM has an overhead in RAM usage (to handle emulation) on top of the RAM made available inside the VM to the guest OS.   You may therefore find that you cannot successfully simultaneously run 3 VMs each with 4GB RAM allocated.   Having said that you will probably get away with it since you left 4GB for unRAID to handle its NAS and emulation duties.   Just thought it was worth mentioning in case you experience RAM related issues when the 3rd VM is started.

[Blindsay]

11 hours ago, fmp4m said:

Leave atleast 1gb to unraid.   (recommend 2).  Or don't run all vm's at once.

 

I need all of the VM's running,

6GB, 6GB & 2GB which leaves 2GB for unraid

 

that should work right?

[DieFalse]

This should work. However I can not say how comfortably as I don't know what dockers or plugins you are running alongside.

[Blindsay]

3 hours ago, fmp4m said:

This should work. However I can not say how comfortably as I don't know what dockers or plugins you are running alongside.

no dockers and only the un-assigned devices plugin

[itimpi]

5 hours ago, Blindsay said:

 

I need all of the VM's running,

6GB, 6GB & 2GB which leaves 2GB for unraid

 

that should work right?

Not sure this will work as each VM has a non-trivial overhead (on top of the RAM visible to the guest OS) to handle emulation duties.    You might be better off starting with 4Gb, 4Gb, 2Gb to get things working and then increasing the RAM allocated to the VMs until you start encountering problems getting all 3 to run simultaneously.