Resource Allocation Confusion

[norsemangrey]

I am quite new to Proxmox and I have been trying to read up on the subject of resource allocation, but I still find it difficult to determine the best practises.

As an example I have recently set up Proxmox on a small computer with a 4 Core i3 CPU and 8GB RAM. I have configured 3 VMs; pfSense, Home Assistant OS and an Ubuntu VM running a few Dockers services. I have no idea though, what is the best Memory and Processor configuration for these three with the what is available on the host. Should the total add up to what is available, how much should I "leave" for the host, etc, etc. I would be grateful if someone could give me some pointers.

 

[Dunuin]

You should consider buying more RAM. Thats super low for a hypervisor. Fun starts with 32 GB in my opinion.
As long as you are not using ZFS (Proxmox installed without software raid) Proxmox should run with 1-2GB of RAM. And you should make sure that your host always got a core unused so your host can run even if a VM is completely utilizing all virtual cores.

Just start VMs with 1 vCore and 512MB RAM, add more later if needed und monitor the hosts RAM und CPU usage. You always should got some unused ressources on the host and never hit 100% CPU or RAM. And look at the swapping. Thats a good indicator for running out of RAM.

 

[norsemangrey]

You should consider buying more RAM. Thats super low for a hypervisor. Fun starts with 32 GB in my opinion.
As long as you are not using ZFS (Proxmox installed without software raid) Proxmox should run with 1-2GB of RAM. And you should make sure that your host always got a core unused so your host can run even if a VM is completely utilizing all virtual cores.

Just start VMs with 1 vCore and 512MB RAM, add more later if needed und monitor the hosts RAM und CPU usage. You always should got some unused ressources on the host and never hit 100% CPU or RAM. And look at the swapping. Thats a good indicator for running out of RAM.

Hi @Dunuin. Thanks for the reply. I am not using ZFS here. Everything is running on a single drive. I might consider buying some more RAM later, but for now, for this particular server, the load is pretty much constant and within limits. I am just looking at optimizing resource allocation, because now I feel it is just random. I am also looking for best practices in general. Not just for this server in particular.