Limiting the resource usage of a container

One of the great features of a container, apart from encapsulating application processes, is the possibility of limiting the resources a single container can consume at most. This includes CPU and memory consumption. Let’s have a look at how limiting the amount of memory (RAM) works:

$ docker container run --rm -it \       --name stress-test \
       --memory 512M \
       ubuntu:22.04 /bin/bash

Once inside the container, install the stress tool, which we will use to simulate memory pressure:

/# apt-get update && apt-get install -y stress

Open another terminal window and execute the docker stats command to observe the resource consumption of all running Docker containers. You should see something like this:

Figure 8.2 – The Docker stats showing a resource-limited container

Look...