How to Increase Docker-Machine Memory Mac

Docker machine is a tool that is used popularly for managing the docker engine on several types of virtual hosts, it can also be used to run in the old versions of Windows as well as macOS. the docker did not run on the macOS Windows operating system natively, so another machine was created so that it could be on the operating system natively. This tool is called the docker-machine.

Introduction to Docker Machine on Mac

Docker-machine is a popular tool that can be used for creating and also managing the docker hosts, these hosts are known as virtual machines or VMs which have docker installed in them, on a Mac operating system it is very important to have a docker-machine because Mac operating system does not support the docker natively.

Overview of Docker Machine and Its Role on Mac

A docker-machine is helpful because it can enable the users to docker hosts on different types of platforms which include several platforms such as local environments, remote servers, etc. On a Mac the docker machine has the role of managing the virtual machine and helping it to interact with the docker containers, it also offers various commands to start and stop the docker hosts and configure them according to needs.

Importance of Allocating Adequate Memory to Docker Machine

It is important to make sure that the docker-machine has a sufficient amount of memory for it to function properly, for the containers to share the resources of the underlying virtual machines we require a good amount of memory if there is not a sufficient amount of memory then it can lead to slow performance and it may crash when it is running.

How Docker-machine Works?

Because the docker does not run on the actual host operating system, the docker-machine works to deal with various actions such as IP addresses and ports, etc. The settings for the docker machine are set on the environment variables.

Why Increase Memory in Docker-machine?

It is important to increase the memory in the docker-machine, it can increase the efficiency and working of docker components if memory is increased, it also offers several other benefits such as:

• Performance Improvement: Increasing memory in the docker-machine can directly increase the performance of the software because it can process more simultaneously.
• Large Workload Handling: When there is a large workload to be handled, it is advised to increase the memory so that the workload is processed quickly.
• Prevent Crash: It can also prevent crashes because the crashes mostly occur due to less memory, if the memory is increased the chances of a crash become less.

Steps to Increase Docker Machine Memory on Mac

To increase the docker-machine memory in the macOS operating system, we will have to perform any one of the two methods, one involves the commands while the other method is simple to perform using only commands in the terminal but for this it is important to have the terminal properly configured, properly following any one of these steps can be helpful for increasing the memory:

Mehod 1: Using docker desktop:

Step 1: Open Docker Preferences:

The first step is to go to the docker desktop software and open it, after opening it you will see a settings icon on the top right corner, click on it to open the menu to change the memory size.

Step 2: Open Advanced Settings:

Next step is to open the advanced settings, for this after clicking to the settings icon, go the resources menu and select the advanced option, after this you will see an option as memory with a toggle bar, you can increase or decrease the docker memory using this toggle bar in macOS.

This is it, following this method will easily increase your docker machine memory, but if you want to follow the second method instead then the required steps for that are mentioned below.

Method 2: Using terminal:

Unlike the above method, this method involves some steps and commands to write in the terminal so that the docker machine memory can be increased, following are the steps required for this:

Step 1: Stop the docker machine:

First step is to stop the docker machine, for this simply run the following command in the terminal:

docker-machine stop <machine-name>

Note: Replace the machine-name with your docker machine, usually it is called as "default"

This will stop the docker machine so that we can increase the memory size.

Step 2: Modify the memory allocation:

Next step is to modify the memory allocation, for this we will have to run following command in the terminal after stopping the docker machine:

docker-machine create -d virtualbox --virtualbox-memory <memory-size> <machine-name>

<memory-size> is the amount of memory you want to allocate for docker machine, such as 4096 for 4GB etc.

For example, if we want to allocate 4GB of memory to the machine, we will write the following command:

docker-machine create -d virtualbox --virtualbox-memory 4096 default

Step 3: Start docker machine:

Next and final step is to restart the docker machine, for this run the following command in the terminal:

docker-machine start <machine-name>

This will restart the docker machine.

Verifying and Optimizing Memory Settings

For the first method, we can easily verify if the memory settings are optimized or not, for this once the steps are completed, simply close the software and restart it again, once you restart it you will need to come back to the same options and check that the memory is increased successfully.

For the second method we will have to use the following command to check the memory allocation:

docker-machine inspect dev-machine | grep "Memory"

This command will tell us the memory which has been allocated for the machine.

Conclusion

If your system processes the workload slow whenever docker desktop runs processes then it can mean that the docker does not have sufficient amount of memory allocated to it in order to finish the workload faster, because it has a default rate of memory that is allocated so you will have to set the memory according to you and then the memory of docker-machine will be increased.