Code Engine and Containers

IBM Cloud provides multiple ways to run containerised and serverless workloads. This lesson covers IBM Cloud Code Engine (serverless), Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, and IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.

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IBM Cloud Code Engine

Code Engine is a fully managed serverless platform that runs containers, batch jobs, and functions — without managing any infrastructure. It is IBM Cloud's primary serverless compute offering.

What Code Engine Runs

Workload Type	Description
Applications	HTTP-driven workloads that scale to zero when idle
Jobs	Batch workloads that run to completion
Functions	Short-lived, event-driven code (similar to AWS Lambda)

Key Features

• Scale to zero — pay nothing when your app receives no traffic
• Automatic scaling — scales up to handle traffic spikes
• Source-to-container — deploy directly from a Git repository or source code
• No infrastructure — no clusters, nodes, or networking to manage
• Built on Knative and Kubernetes — but fully abstracted away

How It Works

1. Provide your source code, container image, or function code
2. Code Engine builds (if needed) and deploys your workload
3. Traffic arrives → Code Engine scales up instances
4. Traffic stops → Code Engine scales down to zero

Supported Languages

For functions, Code Engine supports:

• Node.js
• Python

For applications and jobs, you can use any language — just provide a container image.

Triggers

Trigger	Description
HTTP	Incoming web requests
Cron	Scheduled execution on a timer
IBM Cloud Events (Event Streams)	Kafka messages
Cloud Object Storage	File upload/change events

Pricing

• Applications: Billed per vCPU-second and GB-second while running
• Jobs: Billed per vCPU-second and GB-second of execution
• Functions: Billed per invocation and execution time
• Free tier: Generous free allocation each month

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Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

IBM Cloud's managed Red Hat OpenShift service provides an enterprise Kubernetes platform:

What is OpenShift?

OpenShift is a Kubernetes distribution from Red Hat that adds:

• Developer tools — built-in CI/CD, source-to-image builds
• Operator framework — automated management of complex applications
• Enhanced security — Security Context Constraints (SCCs), built-in OAuth
• Web console — a powerful GUI for cluster management

Key Features on IBM Cloud