Computing on Aleph Cloud
Aleph Cloud offers a decentralized computing framework that allows users to run applications on the network.
Two execution models are available:
- Functions follow a serverless approach to easily deploy and maintain applications. They offer Function-as-a-service functionality
- Instances are designed to provide a persistent environment for users to interact with directly. They offer full Virtual Machine running under qemu.
Functions can be executed in parallel on multiple Compute Resource Nodes while there will only one running instance on the network.
In both cases, user workloads are executed inside virtual machines (VMs) isolated from each other.
Overview of VMs
There are several types of VMs available on the network:
An On-demand VM is created on a Compute Resource Node (CRN) and is destroyed once the program has finished executing. This is great for programs that are responding to user requests or API calls (using ASGI) and can shutdown after processing the event. They are also cheaper to run as they only require one tenth of the $ALEPH tokens to hold, compared to a Persistent VM.
A Persistent VM can be used to run programs that cannot afford to stop or need to handle incoming connections such as polling data from a websocket or AMQP API.
Instances are similar to Persistent VMs, but are specifically designed to run with a SSH key supplied by the user. This allows the user to connect to the VM and interact with it directly. They do not rely on code execution, but rather on the user's ability to connect to the VM and run commands on it. They cost as much as Persistent VMs.
Instances
See Instances
In additions you can request usage of a GPU or use Confidential instances