Application management overview
IoT Edge provides application management features to standardize the creation, editing, version management, and configuration of applications. It uses application instances to manage applications that are assigned to edge appliances. IoT Edge classifies applications into two types based on their runtime state: containerized applications and process-based applications.
Containerized application
A containerized application runs as a Docker container on an edge appliance and is managed by Kubernetes. Containerized applications are deployed to edge appliances as application instances.
Containerized applications have the following features:
They are hosted as containers in the cloud, which enables coordination between cloud and edge applications.
They support both X86 and ARM architectures.
They support a wide range of scenarios, such as edge intelligence, smart transportation, smart factories, and ApsaraVideo Live.
IoT Edge lets you create custom containerized applications or use official ones. For more information, see:
Process-based application
A process-based application runs as a process on an edge appliance and is managed by the binary runtime in the edge framework. After being assigned to an edge appliance, the application is deployed to the edge.
Process-based applications have the following features:
They support cloud-based code hosting, which lets you manage your code in the cloud and use hot code replacement for deployments to an edge appliance.
They provide high real-time performance. Because the application runs on the edge appliance, it is closer to the data source. This proximity enables faster data collection and analysis, which results in faster response times.
IoT Edge lets you create custom process-based applications or use official ones. For more information, see: