Resource configuration

Most DVMs should start with the generated defaults. Add a dvmkit block to package.json only when the workload or measured production behavior requires something different.

{
  "dvmkit": {
    "memory_mb": 1024,
    "cpu_count": 1,
    "cpu_kind": "shared",
    "min_machines_running": 0,
    "max_machines": 1
  }
}

Field	Range	Meaning
memory_mb	256–16384	RAM per machine
cpu_count	1–16	vCPUs per machine
cpu_kind	shared or performance	Shared or dedicated-performance CPU class
min_machines_running	0–100	Machines kept warm
max_machines	1–100	Maximum concurrent machines

max_machines must be at least min_machines_running. These ranges are platform safety bounds. Your plan can impose lower limits; a rejected deploy names the requested resource and allowed limit. An unlimited plan has no plan cap but still uses the 100-machine platform ceiling.

Pick memory from the work

• 256 MB: HTTP calls, JSON parsing, small text transforms.
• 512 MB: moderate documents or images and larger response assembly.
• 1024 MB: headless browsers, ffmpeg, yt-dlp, or Python subprocesses.
• 2048 MB and above: large local models, long media, or datasets.

These are starting points. Use dvmctl status and logs to measure the deployed process, then move one tier at a time. An out-of-memory kill calls for more memory or a smaller working set, not more machines.

Keep scaling simple

min_machines_running: 0 allows scale-to-zero. Set it to 1 only when measured cold-start latency is unacceptable and the always-on cost is approved.

Keep max_machines: 1 until concurrent jobs are queueing long enough to matter. More machines increase parallel capacity and the maximum running cost. They do not make one CPU-bound job faster.

Shared CPUs suit services that wait on APIs, storage, or networks. Use performance CPUs only after measurement shows local CPU is the bottleneck.

Examples

A network-bound text service:

{
  "dvmkit": {
    "memory_mb": 256,
    "cpu_kind": "shared",
    "min_machines_running": 0,
    "max_machines": 1
  }
}

A container that runs Chromium or ffmpeg:

{
  "dvmkit": {
    "memory_mb": 1024,
    "cpu_kind": "shared",
    "min_machines_running": 0,
    "max_machines": 1
  }
}

Run dvmctl validate after every configuration change and dvmctl deploy --dry-run before applying it. See deploying for the surrounding identity and payment decisions.