Container Instances

Azure Container Instances (ACI) is an Azure service that enables customers to quickly deploy Docker containers without having to manage the underlying host server infrastructure. ACI is designed for container workloads that need to be rapidly deployed, have unpredictable scaling requirements, or do not require a dedicated host environment.

Service Overview 

ACI removes much of the complexity of maintaining a container host environment on-premises or based on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) by offering hosting for containers without underlying infrastructure management requirements. (See “Understanding Containers“.) Customers deploy container images to ACI, specifying required computing resources (CPU cores and memory). ACI dynamically creates container instances with the required resources as needed.

ACI could be useful for short-term container deployments for which the overhead of setting up VM-based infrastructure is not cost-effective. Use cases might include quickly scaling an application in response to demand spikes or rapidly prototyping an application in anticipation of setting up a full-fledged container host environment at a later time.