Containers - Concepts

Unit used to measure the resource consumption of a container. It reflects the amount of memory consumed over time.

An environment variable is a variable whose value is set outside the program, typically through functionality built into the operating system or microservice. An environment variable is made up of a name/value pair, and any number may be created and available for reference at a point in time.

An image, is a blueprint from which an arbitrary number of brand-new containers can be started. You can start a container from an image, perform operations in it and save another image based on the latest state of the container.

JWT (JSON Web Token) is an access token you can create from the console or API to enable an application to access your Private Container. Consult the Developer documentation for more details.

A vCPU (Virtual Central Processing Unit) is equivalent to 1000 mVCPU.

A namespace is a project that allows you to group your containers. Containers in the same Namespace can share environment variables and access tokens, defined at the namespace level.

A NATS trigger is a mechanism that connects a container to a NATS subject and invokes the container automatically whenever a message is published to the subject.

For each message that is sent to a NATS subject, the NATS trigger reads the message and invokes the associated container with the message as the input parameter. The container can then process the message and perform any required actions, such as updating a database or sending a notification.

A container’s privacy policy defines whether a container may be invoked anonymously (public) or only via an authentication mechanism provided by the Scaleway API (private).

One of the advantages of Serverless Container is that when your container is not triggered, it does not consume any resources which enables great savings.

Serverless Containers make scaling your application transparent, up to 20 instances of your container can be run at the same time.

Secrets are an extra-secure type of environment variable. They are environment variables which are injected into your container and stored securely, but not displayed in the console after initial validation.

Serverless allows you to deploy your Functions (FaaS) and Containerized Applications (CaaS) in a managed infrastructure. Scaleway ensures the deployment, the availability, and the scalability of all your projects.

Serverless.com (Serverless Framework) is a tool that allows you to deploy serverless applications without having to manage Serverless Container’s API call. Write and deploy a YAML configuration file, everything else is handled automatically, even the image building.

An SQS (Simple Queue Service) trigger is a mechanism that connects a container to an SQS queue and invokes the container automatically whenever a message is added to the queue.

For each message that is sent to an SQS queue, the SQS trigger reads the message and invokes the associated container with the message as the input parameter. The container can then process the message and perform any required actions, such as updating a database or sending a notification.

A stateless application is a computer program that does not save client data between sessions. Data generated in one session is not saved for use in the next session with that client. All applications deployed on Serverless Containers are stateless.

The timeout is the maximum length of time your container can spend processing a request before being stopped. This value must be in the range 10s to 900s.

vCPU is the abbreviation for virtual Centralized Processing Unit. A vCPU represents a portion or share of the underlying physical CPU assigned to a particular container. The performance of a vCPU is determined by the percentage of time to spend on the physical processor’s core. It is possible to allocate different resource allowances on specific vCPUs for specific containers or virtual machines.

Serverless Containers supports http1 (default) and http2 (h2c). In some cases, for example while deploying a container using gRPC, you may need to upgrade the protocol for it to work.