The Cloud Container Engine is a container service built based on the mainstream open-source technologies of Docker and Kubernetes in the industry. It offers numerous functions that are in line with the scenarios of large-scale enterprise container clusters and has unique advantages in multiple aspects such as system reliability, high performance, and compatibility with open-source communities, meeting various requirements of enterprises in building container clouds.
Easy to Use
- Manage Kubernetes clusters through the WEB interface. It supports managing virtual machine nodes and is applicable to scenarios where virtual machines and physical machines are used in combination.
- Conduct one-stop automated deployment and operation & maintenance of container applications, with the entire life cycle being completed within the container service in one stop.
- Easily expand and shrink cluster nodes and workloads through the Web interface, and freely combine strategies to cope with changeable sudden surges.
- Upgrade Kubernetes clusters with one click through the Web interface.
- Be deeply integrated with application service mesh and Helm standard template, truly achieving out-of-the-box usability.
High Performance
With years of industry technology accumulation in computing, networking, and storage, it provides an industry-leading high-performance Cloud Container Engine to support high-concurrency and large-scale scenarios of your business.
Safe and Reliable
- High Reliability: The cluster control plane supports 3 Master HA (High Availability). When one or two of the control nodes malfunction, the cluster remains available, thus ensuring the high availability of your business. Nodes and workloads within the cluster support cross-availability zone deployment, helping you easily build a multi-active business architecture and ensuring that the business system can continue to operate in cases of host failures, computer room outages, natural disasters, etc., obtaining high stability in the production environment and realizing zero interruption of the business system.
High Security: For private clusters, they are completely under the user’s control. It also deeply integrates account and Kubernetes RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) capabilities, allowing users to set different RBAC permissions for sub-users on the interface.
Open and Compatible
- Based on Docker technology, the Cloud Container Engine provides a complete series of functions such as deployment and running, resource scheduling, service discovery, and dynamic scaling for containerized applications, enhancing the convenience of managing large-scale container clusters.
- Implemented based on the mainstream Kubernetes in the industry, the Cloud Container Engine is fully compatible with the native versions of the Kubernetes/Docker community. It keeps in close step with the latest versions of the community and is fully compatible with the Kubernetes API and Kubectl.
Comparison between Cloud Container Engine and Self-built Kubernetes Clusters
Table 1: Comparison between Cloud Container Engine and Self-built Kubernetes Clusters
| Comparison Items | Self-built Kubernetes Clusters | Cloud Container Engine |
|---|---|---|
| Usability | Managing the infrastructure of self-built Kubernetes clusters usually involves installing, operating, and expanding one’s own cluster management software, configuring management systems, and monitoring solutions, which is complex. Each process of upgrading the cluster requires significant adjustments and brings a heavy burden of operation and maintenance. | Simplified Cluster Management, Easy to Use With the help of the Cloud Container Engine, you can manage and upgrade Kubernetes container clusters. You can automate the deployment and conduct one-stop operation and maintenance of container applications through the Cloud Container Engine, enabling the entire life cycle of applications to be completed efficiently within the container service. You can easily use the deeply integrated application service mesh and Helm standard template through the Cloud Container Engine, truly achieving out-of-the-box usability. You only need to start the container cluster and specify the tasks you want to run, and the Cloud Container Engine will handle all the cluster management work for you, allowing you to focus on developing containerized applications. |
| Scalability | For self-built Kubernetes clusters, the deployment of container services needs to be determined manually according to the business traffic and health conditions, with poor scalability. | Flexible Cluster Hosting, Easy to Scale Up and Down The Cloud Container Engine can easily achieve automatic scaling up and down of cluster nodes and workloads according to the resource usage situation, and can freely combine multiple elastic strategies to cope with sudden traffic surges during business peaks. |
| Reliability | Most self-built Kubernetes clusters adopt a single control node. Once a failure occurs, the cluster and business will become unavailable. | High Service Availability When the “Number of Control Nodes” option is configured as 3 when creating a cluster, the cluster will create three control nodes. After a single control node fails, the cluster can continue to be used without affecting the business functions. |
| Efficiency | For self-built Kubernetes clusters, one needs to build an image repository by oneself or use a third-party image repository. The image pulling method mostly adopts serial transmission, which is of low efficiency. | Rapid Image Deployment, Continuous Business Integration The Cloud Container Engine cooperates with the container image service to provide a container automated delivery pipeline. You don’t need to write Dockerfile and Kubernetes Manifests. Based on the ContainerOps pipeline template, you can customize the enterprise-level container DevOps process. The image pulling method adopts parallel transmission, which significantly improves the container delivery efficiency. |
| Cost | Building, installing, operating, and expanding one’s own cluster management infrastructure for self-built Kubernetes clusters requires a large investment of funds, with high cost. | Low Cost of Cloud Container Engine You only need to pay for the infrastructure resources (such as cloud servers, cloud hard disks, elastic IP/bandwidth, load balancing, etc.) used for storing and running applications and the cost of container cluster control nodes. |
Advantages of Containers
I. Underlying Technology and Isolation Mechanism
Docker is developed using the Go language introduced by Google. It is based on technologies such as cgroup, namespace of the Linux kernel, and Union FS like AUFS. It encapsulates and isolates processes, which belongs to the virtualization technology at the operating system level. Since the isolated processes are independent of the host and other isolated processes, they are also called containers.
II. Simplification of Container Creation and Maintenance
Docker further encapsulates on the basis of containers. From the file system, network interconnection to process isolation, it greatly simplifies the creation and maintenance of containers.
III. Comparison with Traditional Virtual Machine Technology
Traditional virtual machine technology virtualizes a set of hardware first, then runs a complete operating system on it, and finally runs the required application processes on this system. However, the application processes inside containers directly run on the host’s kernel. Containers do not have their own kernels and do not perform hardware virtualization. As a result, Docker technology is lighter and faster than virtual machine technology.
