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Mangrove runs on one box, so the questions are how much of it each app may use and how many copies of it run.

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Memory and CPU limits

Every service has a memory limit (MB) and a CPU limit (cores), set when you create the deployment (default 256 MB and 0.5 cores). Docker enforces both: a service that goes over its memory limit is killed and restarted. Limits can’t be edited after creation yet. To change them, create a new deployment with the new limits. Compose stacks are the exception: Mangrove doesn’t inject limits into them. Set them in the compose file under deploy.resources.limits.

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The memory budget

Mangrove adds up the memory limits of every deployment that isn’t stopped (limit × replicas). If a new deploy would push that total over MANGROVE_DEPLOYMENT_MEMORY_CEILING_MB (default 1536), it’s refused before anything starts, with a clear error, instead of the box running out of memory later. In production a systemd slice enforces the same ceiling at the kernel level as a backstop. See Going to production. To free budget:
  • Stop a deployment you don’t need right now. Stopped deployments don’t count.
  • Delete deployments you’re done with.
Idle sleep saves real memory while an app is asleep, but a sleeping deployment still counts toward the budget, because it can wake at any moment. Anyone signed in can see the budget, what’s using it, and a 30-day history under Admin → Resource budget.

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Replicas

The Replicas card on a deployment’s Overview tab runs 1 to 32 copies of it. Changing the count triggers a deploy: the new set of containers starts, passes health checks, and only then replaces the old set.
  • Only Dockerfile, Nixpacks and Existing image deployments can scale. Compose stacks and static sites stay at one.
  • Each replica counts against the memory budget.
  • All replicas share the deployment’s port, and Caddy spreads requests across them.
From the CLI or TUI: + and - on a deployment in mangrove-tui, or the scale_deployment MCP tool.

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Seeing usage

  • Overview tab: each service’s limits, replica count, and its latest health check with response time.
  • Admin → Resource budget: memory allocated to deployments against memory actually used, running containers, disk, and their history.
  • Server health (sidebar): the whole box’s CPU, memory, swap, disk, load and uptime.
  • The sidebar’s Mangrove mark turns red for owners when the box’s memory or disk passes 90%.
See Metrics and health.