Serverless Containers Quick Start

Deploy your first serverless container on DanubeData in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

• A DanubeData account with an active team
• A container image (Docker Hub, GitHub Container Registry, etc.) or a Git repository with your application code

Option A: Deploy a Docker image

Step 1: Create a container

1. Navigate to Serverless Containers in the sidebar
2. Click Create Container
3. Select Docker Image as the deployment type

Step 2: Configure the image

1. Enter a name for your container (e.g., my-api)
2. Enter the image URL (e.g., docker.io/library/nginx:alpine)
3. Set the port your application listens on (e.g., 80 for nginx, 3000 for Node.js, 8080 for Go). Some ports are reserved by the platform.

DanubeData validates that the image exists and is pullable before proceeding.

Step 3: Select resources

Choose a resource profile:

Profiles have no fixed monthly fee — serverless billing is pay-per-use (vCPU-seconds, memory GiB-seconds, requests) with a free tier that includes 2M requests per month.

Configure scaling:

• Min replicas — Set to 0 for scale-to-zero (default) or 1 to avoid cold starts
• Max replicas — Maximum number of instances (default: 10)

Step 4: Add environment variables (optional)

Add any environment variables your application needs:

• Database connection strings
• API keys and secrets
• Application configuration

Step 5: Deploy

Click Create Container. DanubeData will:

1. Generate a Knative Service manifest
2. Deploy via GitOps (ArgoCD)
3. Provision a TLS certificate

Your container will be accessible at:

https://my-api-{team-name}.danubedata.run

Option B: Deploy from a Git repository

Step 1: Create a container

1. Navigate to Serverless Containers in the sidebar
2. Click Create Container
3. Select Git Repository as the deployment type

Step 2: Connect your repository

1. Enter your repository URL (e.g., https://github.com/yourorg/yourapp)
2. Select the branch to deploy (defaults to main)
3. Choose authentication:
   • None — For public repositories
   • SSH Key — Paste your SSH private key
   • Access Token — Paste a personal access token

Step 3: Configure the build

Choose your build method:

• Buildpacks (recommended) — Auto-detects your runtime. No Dockerfile needed.
• Dockerfile — Uses your own Dockerfile. Specify the path if it's not in the repo root.

If using Buildpacks, DanubeData auto-detects your runtime from files like package.json (Node.js), requirements.txt (Python), go.mod (Go), etc.

Step 4: Select resources and deploy

1. Choose a resource profile
2. Set scaling parameters
3. Add environment variables
4. Click Create Container

DanubeData will clone your repository, build the image, push it to the registry, and deploy it.

Step 5: Set up webhooks (optional)

For automatic builds on every push:

1. Navigate to the container detail page
2. Go to the Activity tab
3. Copy the Webhook URL and Webhook Secret
4. Add a webhook in your Git provider settings (GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket)

Verify your deployment

Once the status shows Running:

# Test your container
curl https://my-api-{team-name}.danubedata.run

# Check with verbose output
curl -v https://my-api-{team-name}.danubedata.run

What's next

• Add a custom domain — Use your own domain with automatic TLS
• Configure authentication — Secure your endpoints
• View code examples — Call your container from any language
• Learn about scaling — Configure auto-scaling and scheduled scaling

Picked the wrong deployment method? You can switch a container between Docker image, Git repository, and ZIP upload later from its Edit page — see Changing the deployment source.

Questions? Contact support at support@danubedata.ro