This was such a fun experiment to see how many virtual machines you can realistically get on a modern mini PC with 96 GB of memory. I tested using the Geekom AE7 with the Ryzen 7840HS processor with 16 threads and 96 GB of DDR5 memory. See just how far I was able to get running VMs on a mini PC! Did I reach 250?
Written blog post on the quest to run 250 VMs! https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2024/07/proxmox-mini-pc-monster-running-150-virtual-machines/
Proxmox Kernel Samepage Merging (KSM) – https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Dynamic_Memory_Management
Check out Tek2Cloud, another project I am working on: https://tek2cloud.com
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Introduction – 0:00
Overview of how Mini PCs are great for home lab – 0:32
Mini PC I am using for the test – 1:00
Overview of the VM template in Proxmox – 1:47
Starting with 50 virtual machines – 2:46
80, 100, 115, 125 virtual machines – 3:06
Talking about RAM usage – 3:21
How Proxmox handles memory overcommit – 3:43
Kernel Samepage Merging deduplicates memory pages – 4:05
140, 150, 180 virtual machines – 5:13
Going for broke – 200 VMs and then 250! – 5:29
Looking at 200 VMs in Proxmox – 5:50
Talking more about memory management in Proxmox 6:00
Upping the number of VMs and IO delay – 6:10
210 VMs running – 8:00
The VMs are responsive and able to do work, running stress utility – 8:27
Cloning more! 9:11
Reaching 250 VMs! 10:15
99% memory 99% CPU – 10:29
Launching stress utilities in VMs – 10:48
Discussing random VMs powered off – 11:39
Looking at VMs that are powered off – 12:16
Discussing idle virtual machines – 13:03
Concluding comments – 14:06
