How to reduce default VM memory for Docker Linux containers on Windows

Question

Scenario

• Windows 10 Professional
• Docker 18.06.1-ce running in Windows container mode
• 4GB of available memory on host system
• using Hype

Answer 1

After some searching I found out that settings of Docker's user interface are stored in %APPDATA%\Docker\settings.json (e.g. C:\Users\olly\AppData\Roaming\Docker), memory settings are defined in memoryMiB property.

The following solved the problem on my environement:

• quit Docker
• modify settings.json file using notepad %APPDATA%\Docker\settings.json in the run command prompt (Windows-Key + R)
• adjust value memoryMiB to 1024 (has been 2048 before)
  • in Docker versions 19.x and later the property is called memoryMiB
  • in Docker versions 18.x and before the property was called VmMemory
• save settings.json
• start Docker and finally being able to use "switch to Linux containers"

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Property memoryMiB in Docker versions 19.x and later

Property VmMemory in Docker versions 18.x and before