What Does Virtual Machine Density (VM Density) Mean?
Virtual machine (VM) density refers to the number of virtual machines present in a single physical host which can be run normally without any of them being starved from any one resource. It is a relatively new metric which is now used to measure efficiency and directly affects the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a cloud computing system or service.
Techopedia Explains Virtual Machine Density (VM Density)
VM density is the ratio of virtual machines per physical server or host. Generally, the higher the VM density, the more efficient and cost-effective the system is. But that is just a rough and face-value estimate, as many factors must be considered before declaring the actual density. For example, one could theoretically achieve a density 50 virtual machines in a single host, or as much as is allowable by the storage capacity, but only a few of them could be active at once since resources such as compute and memory may not be enough. So a more realistic VM density would be about 15 to 20 for a high-capacity physical host.
