Build OCI Container Instance configurations with multi-container and health checks.
Last verified: May 2026
Build OCI Container Instance configurations with multi-container support, health checks, and networking.
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compartmentIddisplayNameshapeshapeConfigcontainersOutput will appear here...OCI Container Instances provide a serverless container runtime for running containers without managing servers or Kubernetes clusters. You define one or more containers per instance, specify shape and resource allocations, configure networking and storage, and OCI handles the underlying infrastructure. This builder helps you assemble container instance configurations including image sources, environment variables, resource limits, volume mounts, and VCN subnet placement. It generates configurations compatible with the OCI CLI, Terraform, and the OCI SDK.
Container Instances are a serverless option for running individual containers or small groups of containers without Kubernetes overhead. They are ideal for simple workloads, batch jobs, and CI/CD tasks. OKE is a full Kubernetes platform for orchestrating many containers with service discovery, rolling updates, auto-scaling, and persistent storage. Choose Container Instances when you need to run a few containers quickly; choose OKE when you need container orchestration at scale.
Yes, a Container Instance can run up to 60 containers that share the same network namespace and can communicate via localhost. This is similar to a Kubernetes pod. You allocate OCPU and memory at the instance level, and individual containers can have resource limits within that allocation. Multi-container instances are useful for sidecar patterns like log forwarding, metrics collection, or TLS proxying.
Your team needs to run a nightly database backup verifier — pulls a fresh database backup, runs validation queries, posts results to Slack. Currently runs on a 24/7 small VM costing $30/month. The builder generates a Container Instance config: 1 OCPU + 2 GB, runs nightly, exits after completion. Triggered by OCI Scheduler. New cost: 5 minutes/day × 30 days × $0.025/OCPU-hr = ~$0.25/month. 120x cheaper, less ops surface area to maintain.
The builder constructs OCI Container Instance resources: container definitions (image, command, working directory, environment variables, resource config), shape and shape config (OCPU and memory allocation), VCN subnet placement, image pull secrets reference, container restart policy, and graceful shutdown timeout. Output is provided as oci CLI commands and Terraform oci_container_instances_container_instance resources.
Container Instances are billed per-second with NO minimum charge — perfect for short-lived batch jobs and CI/CD agents. A 30-second container literally costs cents on Container Instances vs paying for an idle VM or OKE node pool.
The 60-container-per-instance limit shares network namespace. Use this for sidecar patterns: main container + log forwarder + tracing agent. Don't try to run unrelated workloads in the same instance — they'll compete for the shared resource pool.
Container Instances don't support persistent storage natively. For stateful workloads (databases, queue systems), use OKE with persistent volumes instead. Container Instances are for STATELESS work — build artifacts, batch processors, webhook handlers.
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