The operator can constrain the memory available to a container. If the host supports swap memory, then the setting can be larger than physical RAM.

When the processes inside the container exceed the memory limit, effects vary depending on your setup, e.g. out of memory errors may occur or the operating system could start killing processes.

Consult Docker Run Documentation for further information.

Note that on most Docker installations, the memory limit will not stop Jenkins/Docker from spawning so many containers that the machines total available memory will be exceeded. However, some Docker installations might be able to constrain the number of containers automatically using the memory limit.