Container Manager

The Container Manager lets you deploy and run custom services directly within the Arango Contextual Data Platform. Run your own applications and workloads alongside Arango’s services while seamlessly integrating with the platform’s existing infrastructure, including authentication, routing, telemetry, and license management.

You can deploy services in two ways:

• Bring Your Own Code: Upload your source code packages, and the Container Manager builds secure containers using platform-provided hardened base images.
• Bring Your Own Container: Provide a Docker image URL, and the platform deploys it directly.

Both deployment options are available through the Web Interface or API. In both cases, the Container Manager orchestrates deployment through the Arango Control Plane (ACP) service. The platform handles security and integration automatically.

Services that serve their own user interface can additionally be registered as Apps, making them available in the platform’s Apps catalog with their UI embedded in the web interface. See Host a UI with Apps.

Getting Started

Bring Your Own Code

Create a .tar.gz package from your source code with your dependencies.

See how to Package Your Code for detailed instructions.

Bring Your Own Container

Provide a Docker image URL and the platform deploys it directly. By default, the platform routes traffic to an HTTP server on port 8000, which your Docker image must expose. Your image must also handle requests at the root path (/).

Legacy Foxx services

ArangoDB up to version 3.12 had the Foxx microservice framework to run JavaScript code on the server-side to enable customization. You can think of the data platform’s user-defined services (bring your own code/container) as a more powerful incarnation of Foxx:

• A microservice architecture but with a clear separation of the core database system and the surrounding services.
• Not limited to (synchronous) JavaScript – you may use a standard Node.js runtime with its entire ecosystem including async libraries.
• You can use different programming languages and environments altogether thanks to containerization.

Any existing Foxx services from ArangoDB v3.12 and older that you still require need to be rewritten for the data platform and ArangoDB 4.0+. You may consider using AI tools for this.

Key Capabilities

• Custom Service Deployment: Upload code packages (.tar.gz files) or provide Docker image URLs to deploy running services.

• Apps: Register a service that serves a UI as an App and use it embedded in the platform’s Apps catalog.

• Multiple Runtimes: For code-based deployments, supported runtime environments include Python with optional CUDA/GPU support, as well as Node.js. For image-based deployments, you can use any runtime packaged in your Docker image.

• Version Management: Maintain and deploy multiple versions of the same service with easy updates.

• Service Scopes: Deploy services globally across all databases or scope them to specific databases.

Where Services Run

Control where your services are accessible and how they integrate with your databases:

• Global: Services are accessible across all databases in your deployment. Platform-wide or global services are typically used for shared infrastructure like API gateways, machine learning model serving, or notification services that need to operate across multiple databases.

• Database-Specific: Services are bound to a single database. These are typically used for data-processing APIs, webhook handlers, or any processing that should remain isolated to one database context.

Supported Environments

Deploy services using runtime environments and resources tailored to your needs.

Code-based deployments (Bring Your Own Code):

• Python 3.12 (base, PyTorch, and cuGraph variants available)
• Node.js 22 (base variant)

Container-based deployments (Bring Your Own Container):

• Any runtime or language packaged in your container image

Security

All deployed services operate within the platform’s security framework, with integrated authentication, network isolation, and access controls.