5 Things to Know About Running Two Databases on 16GB RAM

16GB is tight for production databases MySQL and PostgreSQL are memory-hungry when doing real work. They cache data, hold connections, and run query plans.

Container overhead eats into your memory Running two databases in containers means sharing 16GB between the databases, the container runtime, and the host OS. You will hit swap fast if you are not careful.

Dev and staging environments can work For a low-traffic staging server or dev environment, 16GB is probably fine. You can tune each database to use less memory.

Moderate traffic will cause problems A few hundred connections or queries touching large tables will make 16GB feel cramped. Expect OOM kills and slow queries.

32GB is a comfortable minimum for production Aim for 32GB as a floor for two production databases. If you cannot, limit memory per container and monitor free closely.