Optimizing Colima for Low Resource Usage

· 157 words · 1 minute read

If you’re a developer using Docker in Mac, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Colima, a docker desktop replacement. Colima utilizes a Ubuntu virtual machine (VM) to facilitate Docker runtime. While convenient, the default VM settings can be resource-intensive.

I found three parameter that can improve performance:

  1. VM Size: The default size is a 30GB. I kept this as it is. As I had enough free space in disk.

  2. CPU: The default allocates 2 cores. If you’re primarily using containers for services like MySQL and Redis, you can likely get away with a single core.

  3. Memory: The default provides 2GB, but for a scenario involving just two containers as above, allocating 750MB was sufficient in my case.

Additionally, changing below configuration can help (only for mac).

  • vmType: vz
  • mountType: virtiofs

Then execute colima delete to delete existing VM and colima start to create new one with updated configuration.

BTW I’m using MacBook Pro with Intel i7.