Docker desktop eats all memory and crashes

Question

Using Docker Desktop (19.03.13) with 6 containers in Windows 10. Having 16GB RAM.

In docker stats each container consumes 20-500 mb, all together cunsume ~1gb.

But in the Task Manager docker eats ~10gb and crashes from the lack of system memory.

How to check, what consumes so much memory in docker? And how to prevent this?

Answer 1

Try to create a .wslconfig file at the root of your User folder C:\Users\<my-user> to adjust how much memory & processors Docker will use.

This is the content of the .wslconfig file.

[wsl2]
memory=2GB   # Limits VM memory in WSL 2 up to 2GB
processors=2# Makes the WSL 2 VM use two virtual processors

Then, restart the computer. You will find the Vemm process will only take the amount of RAM you defined previously.

You can learn more here here

Answer 2

I guess you are using the new WSL 2 based engine, try switching docker engine back to Hyper-V by going opening docker settings -> general -> uncheck Use WSL 2 based Engine .

To explain:

I noticed it started happening to me since WSL 2 engine was introduced, i automatically switched to it since it's a new engine; Memory issues started arising since then.

Restarting/closing docker did not free the memory and i noticed in task Manager Vemm was the one eating all memory, so had to force close it (caused docker not to work).

Last thing i did was switching docker engine back to Hyper-V solved my high memory usage.