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Help Center/ Cloud Container Instance/ FAQs/ Basic Concept FAQs/ What Are the Differences Between Cloud Container Instance and Cloud Container Engine?

What Are the Differences Between Cloud Container Instance and Cloud Container Engine?

Updated on 2024-05-08 GMT+08:00

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Huawei Cloud provides two CNCF-certified Kubernetes services that feature high performance, high availability, and high security: Cloud Container Engine (CCE) and Cloud Container Instance (CCI).

CCE provides highly scalable, high-performance, enterprise-class Kubernetes clusters to run containers. CCE is a one-stop container platform that provides full-stack container services from Kubernetes cluster management, lifecycle management of containerized applications, application service mesh, and Helm charts to add-on management, application scheduling, and monitoring and O&M. With CCE, you can easily deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications on Huawei Cloud.

For details, see What Is Cloud Container Engine?

CCI is a serverless container engine that allows you to run containers without creating and managing servers or clusters. With CCI, you only need to manage containerized services running on Kubernetes. You can quickly create and run containerized workloads on CCI without managing clusters and servers.

With the serverless architecture, you can focus on building and operating applications without having to create or manage servers, not to mention the issues caused by abnormal server running. All you have to do is to specify resource requirements (on CPU and memory, for example). This gives you a more focused approach to business needs and helps you reduce management and maintenance costs. Traditionally, to run containerized workloads using Kubernetes, you need to create a Kubernetes cluster first.

For details, see What Is CCI?

Description

**Table 1** Introduction to CCE and CCI
Cloud Container Engine (CCE)	Cloud Container Instance (CCI)
CCE provides highly scalable, high-performance, enterprise-class Kubernetes clusters and supports Docker containers. CCE is a one-stop container platform that provides full-stack container services from Kubernetes cluster management, lifecycle management of containerized applications, application service mesh, and Helm charts to add-on management, application scheduling, and monitoring and O&M. With CCE, you can easily deploy, manage, and scale containerized applications on Huawei Cloud. For details, see What Is Cloud Container Engine?	CCI is a serverless container engine that allows you to run containers without creating and managing server clusters. With CCI, you only need to manage containerized services running on Kubernetes. You can quickly create and run containerized workloads on CCI without managing clusters and servers. With the serverless architecture, you can focus on building and operating applications without having to create or manage servers, not to mention the issues caused by abnormal server running. All you have to do is to specify resource requirements (on CPU and memory, for example). This gives you a more focused approach to business needs and helps you reduce management and maintenance costs. Traditionally, to run containerized workloads using Kubernetes, you need to create a Kubernetes cluster first.

Creation Mode

**Table 2** Different creation modes
Cloud Container Engine (CCE)	Cloud Container Instance (CCI)
CCE is a hosted Kubernetes service for container management. It allows you to create native Kubernetes clusters with just a few clicks. You need to create clusters and nodes on the console, but you do not need to manage master nodes.	CCI provides a serverless container engine. When deploying containers on Huawei Cloud, you do not need to purchase and manage ECSs, eliminating the need for O&M and management. You can start applications without the need to create clusters, master nodes, or worker nodes.

Billing

**Table 3** Different billing modes
Aspect	Cloud Container Engine (CCE)	Cloud Container Instance (CCI)
Pricing	Resources are charged.	CPU (core-hour) and memory (GiB-hour)
Billing mode	Yearly/Monthly and pay-per-use	Pay-per-use
Minimum pricing unit	Hour	Second

Application Scenarios

**Table 4** Different application scenarios
Cloud Container Engine (CCE)	Cloud Container Instance (CCI)
Applicable to all scenarios. Generally, CCE runs large-scale and long-term stable applications, such as e-commerce, service middle-end, and IT system.	Applicable to batch computing, high-performance computing, burst scale-out, and CI/CD tests.

Cluster Creation

**Table 5** Different cluster creation modes
Cloud Container Engine (CCE)	Cloud Container Instance (CCI)
Configure basic information (name, Region, networking, and compute) > Create a worker node > Configure the cluster > Create a workload.	Configure basic information (name, Region, networking, and compute) > Create a workload.

Cooperation Between CCE and CCI

By installing the virtual-kubelet add-on, you can use CCI to deploy pods for your Deployments, StatefulSets, and jobs on CCE when service spikes occur, which can reduce consumption caused by cluster scaling.

Functions:

Creates pods automatically in seconds. When CCE cluster resources are insufficient, you do not need to add nodes to the cluster. virtual-kubelet automatically creates pods on CCI, eliminating the overhead of resizing the CCE cluster.
Seamlessly works with Huawei Cloud SWR for you to use public and private images.
Supports event synchronization, monitoring, logging, remote command execution, and status query for CCI pods.
Allows you to view the capacity information about virtual elastic nodes.
Supports connectivity between CCE and CCI pods through Services.

For details, see Elastic Scaling of CCE Pods to CCI.

Parent topic: Basic Concept FAQs

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