Go to 16GB for multiple VMs.

Yes. 8GB is barely enough for one modern VM, and trying to run two or more will have you fighting the system.

Virtual machines are memory hogs. Each one needs its own chunk of RAM for the guest OS and applications. On 8GB, your host OS already eats 2–3GB, leaving maybe 5GB for VMs. That gets you one lightweight Linux VM or a tiny Windows instance. Add a second VM and you’ll start swapping to disk, which kills performance.

With 16GB, you can comfortably run two or three VMs at once. The host still has room to breathe, and the VMs can actually run their workloads without grinding to a halt. You’ll see the difference immediately: no lag, no beachball, no waiting for pages to load because everything is in RAM.

If you plan to run heavy VMs—like Windows with 8GB allocated, or multiple database servers—you might want 32GB. But 16GB is the sweet spot for most people juggling a couple of VMs. Don’t waste time fiddling with memory limits on 8GB; just upgrade.