Yo,
Wandering what the limit is when it comes to how many containers I can run. Currently I’m running around 15 containers. What happens if this is increased to say, 40? Also, can docker containers go “idle” when not being used - to save system resources?
I’m running a i7-6700k Intel cpu. Doesn’t seem to be struggling at all with my current setup at least, maybe only when transcoding for Jellyfin.
A Docker container is essentially a process running on your machine. Just like any other process. It can be idle, stopped or hogging the CPU. You can use Docker constraints to limit resource use if you want to, memory, CPU and network to name a few.
So, can you run 40 processes?
Very likely. Probably 400 or 4000, depending on CPU usage and memory.
I ran that particular CPU with 64 GB of RAM and used it to run multiple virtual machines, my main debian desktop and a VM specifically as a docker host, running dozens of instances of Google Chrome without ever noticing it slowing down.
Then the power cable shortened out and life was never the same. That was six months ago, the machine was a late 2015 iMac running macos and VMware Fusion.
I’ll add here that the “docker top” command allows you to easily see what kind of resources your containers are using.
If you prefer a UI, Dozzle runs as a container, is super lightweight, requires basically no setup, and makes it very easy to see your docker resource usage.
Very handy, thanks!
Also try Lazydocker, I think it’s far superior to Dozzle for features. If you run it in a folder with a docker-compose.yml, it’ll just show the processes from that set of containers, if you run it in any other folder it’ll show all your docker containers.
This i will definitely look into, love dozzle for when I need to troubleshoot.