This topic describes the features of Elastic Container Instance.
Container running service
Elastic Container Instance is an agile, secure, and serverless container running service. An elastic container instance is a container group and is similar to a pod in Kubernetes. An elastic container instance consists of basic components, such as vCPUs, memory, operating system, container runtime, network, and temporary storage. For more information, see Overview.
Serverless
Elastic Container Instance allows you to run containers without the need to manage underlying servers or plan resource capacities. You need to only prepare images for containers.
Custom specifications
You can specify the specifications of computing resources to run containers.
Specify the specifications of Elastic Container Instance resources: You can specify the number of vCPUs and memory size for an instance or a container.
Specify the specifications of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) resources: You can specify the specifications of ECS resources such as GPUs and AMD processors to meet specific business requirements.
Pay-as-you-go billing method
Elastic Container Instance provides a one-stop solution for you to manage the lifecycle of instances. The service supports the pay-as-you-go billing method. Bills are generated on an hourly basis and are accurate to seconds.
Scaling within seconds
Elastic container instances can be started within seconds to support fast scale-out and scale-in and meet the real-time response requirements of your business.
Image cache
Elastic Container Instance provides the image cache feature, which can accelerate the creation of instances and reduce the time required to start instances. For more information, see Overview of image caches.
Compatibility with Kubernetes
By using Virtual Kubelet that is provided by the Kubernetes community to deploy virtual nodes to Kubernetes clusters, you can connect Elastic Container Instance to Kubernetes. Elastic Container Instance provides high elasticity to Kubernetes clusters to overcome the computing capacity limits of physical nodes. After you connect Elastic Container Instance to Kubernetes, Elastic Container Instance takes over the management of pods, including the infrastructure of pods and the resources for pods. Kubernetes no longer needs to manage the lifecycle and resources of the underlying VMs.
You can connect Elastic Container Instance to the following types of Kubernetes clusters:
Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) clusters
If you are selecting a service to use Kubernetes clusters, we recommend that you select ACK. The integration of Elastic Container Instance into ACK clusters allows Kubernetes pods to run on ECS and Elastic Container Instance. The integration of Elastic Container Instance into ACK Serverless clusters allows Kubernetes pods to run exclusively on Elastic Container Instance. You can use ACK clusters or ACK Serverless clusters to experience the capabilities of Elastic Container Instance to run containers. For more information, see Connection overview.
Self-managed Kubernetes clusters
If you have self-managed Kubernetes clusters in a data center or on ECS, you can use elastic container instances by deploying virtual nodes to Kubernetes clusters. For more information, see Overview.
Integration with cloud services
Elastic Container Instance is tightly integrated with other Alibaba Cloud services. You can use the all-in-one Elastic Container Instance console to perform efficient operations. In addition to ACK clusters and ACK Serverless clusters, Elastic Container Instance is integrated with the following cloud services:
Container Registry: Elastic Container Instance is integrated with Container Registry to use the image features provided by Container Registry.
Server Load Balancer (SLB): Elastic Container Instance is integrated with SL to allow you to add elastic container instances as backend servers to SLB instances. Elastic container instances can be connected to the Internet by using NAT gateways and Elastic IP addresses (EIPs).
Disks, Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS), and Object Storage Service (OSS): You can combine Elastic Container Instance with disks, NAS, and OSS to implement persistent storage of container data.
Simple Log Service: Elastic Container Instance allows you to store collected logs to Simple Log Service.
Resource Access Management (RAM): You can use RAM to control access to resources of Elastic Container Instance.
Auto Scaling: You can use Auto Scaling to implement automatic scaling of elastic container instances.
For more information, see Services that work with Elastic Container Instance.