Virtualization Maximums

nTF-QEMUGuidelines.txt

For ethical reasons, the novaTopFlex community must be realistic and avoid extreme ambition on virtualized systems.
To avoid being overly ambitious, novaTopFlex recommends limits to system allocation based on the needs of the virtual machines.
novaTopFlex recommends a maximum of 2 terabytes (2 TB) per image on external storage media to virtual machines.
novaTopFlex recommends a maximum of 512 gigabytes (512 GB) per image on internal storage media to virtual machines.
novaTopFlex recommends a maximum of 16 gigabytes (16 GB) of random-access memory (RAM) per virtual machine.
For systems that do not have adequate memory resources (<64 GB RAM), novaTopFlex recommends a maximum of 1/4 the total system RAM per virtual machine.
For systems that do not have adequate storage resources (<2 TB total storage internally or <8 TB total storage externally), novaTopFlex recommends a maximum of 1/4 the total available storage for virtual machines internally or per virtual machine externally.
In case of confusion from the previous statement: novaTopFlex recommends a hard 25% storage cap for storing virtual machines on internal storage.
However, novaTopFlex recommends a soft 25% storage cap for virtual machine images on external storage.
For exanple, novaTopFlex recommends no more than 256 GB of a 1 TB internal drive be utilized for virtual machines.
However, novaTopFlex only recommends the 256 GB limit of a 1 TB external drive be utilized for virtual machines on external storage, with an 80% hard cap and a 40-60% soft cap.

Overall, the maximum recommended QEMU configuration can be achieved in fewer steps than enthusiasts may initially expect:

$ qemu-img create -f raw /dev/sdb/[DISTRO]Alt.img 2T
$ qemu-img create -f raw /dev/sdb/Bonus.img 1T
$ qemu-img create -f raw $HOME/QEMU-IMGs/flash.img 8G
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -cpu kvm64 -accel kvm -smp cpus=1,cores=2,threads=2,maxcpus=4 -m 16384 -device VGA,vgamem_mb=256,xres=1440,yres=810 -drive file=/dev/sdb/[DISTRO]Alt.img,format=raw,media=disk -drive file=/dev/sdb/Bonus.img,format=raw,media=disk -drive file=$HOME/QEMU-IMGs/flash.img,format=raw,media=disk -drive file=$HOME/QEMU-ISOs/[DISTRO].iso,format=raw,media=cdrom -boot [option]
# -boot c --> Boot from the disk after successful setup and installation.
# -boot d --> Boot from the CD-ROM or optical disc during setup, installation, recovery, etc.