Serverless App Engine (SAE) is an application-oriented serverless service that integrates infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) into a single managed environment. SAE supports web applications and mainstream microservices frameworks. Deploy applications without provisioning servers, managing clusters, or learning Kubernetes — SAE handles the infrastructure so you can focus on your code.
Zero infrastructure management
SAE runs on a serverless architecture. Deploy and run applications without provisioning, maintaining, or managing any IaaS resources. You never need to troubleshoot cluster availability, capacity, or performance — SAE handles all of it. The integrated and fully managed console provides out-of-the-box lifecycle management and observability features so you can debug issues quickly.
Pay only for what you use
Traditional deployments require you to reserve fixed capacity for peak traffic, leaving resources idle most of the time. SAE charges based on the actual resources your applications consume, so you pay nothing during off-peak hours. This eliminates waste without manual intervention and reduces costs.
Flexible auto scaling
SAE supports multiple auto scaling strategies that can be combined to match real-world traffic patterns:
| Strategy | Trigger |
|---|---|
| Metric-based scaling | Basic monitoring metrics such as CPU and Mem, and business monitoring metrics such as QPS, RT, and TCP |
| Scheduled scaling | Fixed time periods |
| Hybrid scaling | Combination of scheduled and metric-based policies |
To keep scaling fast, SAE also provides in-place upgrades, image pre-download, DADI-based image acceleration, cold start acceleration for Java applications, and multi-threading optimization during Java application runtime.
Deploy without learning Kubernetes or Docker
Deploy applications written in any programming language using source code, code packages, or container images — without understanding Docker or Kubernetes internals. SAE abstracts away the underlying container infrastructure.
For microservices, SAE provides non-intrusive governance: migrate Spring Cloud or Dubbo applications without modifying any code. Capabilities include:
Service registration and discovery
Environment isolation
Configuration management
Throttling and degradation
Lossless application connection and disconnection
Service authentication
End-to-end canary release
Open standards
SAE is built on container standards. Core capabilities are open source and not locked to any cloud provider. The engineering platform integrates CLI and Source to Application (S2A) to support both development and O&M workflows.
Application security
SAE uses secure containers as the underlying runtime and isolates networks using virtual private clouds (VPCs), improving the security of your applications at runtime.
Built-in service integrations
SAE automatically integrates with Alibaba Cloud infrastructure and microservices services:
| Category | Services |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure | Server Load Balancer (SLB), Simple Log Service, CloudMonitor |
| Microservices | Application Configuration Management (ACM), Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS), Application High Availability Service (AHAS) |