Alibaba Cloud#

Two ways to run the vid2context image on Alibaba Cloud:

Image details and env vars: docker.md.

Region and egress#

• Use a region outside mainland China, such as ap-southeast-1 (Singapore, the default in s.yaml), cn-hongkong or us-west-1. Mainland regions cannot reach YouTube or many other video sites, and a public endpoint there needs an ICP filing.
• Function Compute's outbound address is shared and changes. For a fixed egress IP, attach a VPC with a NAT gateway (vpcConfig in s.yaml); that costs extra and does not help with YouTube.
• YouTube blocks many datacenter IPs, Alibaba's included: expect metadata to work and captions or downloads to be refused at times. The robust path for YouTube is the container at home behind a Cloudflare Tunnel; see docker.md.

Push the image to ACR#

Container Registry (ACR) Personal Edition is free. In the ACR console for your region, create the instance if asked, a namespace, and set a registry password. Then:

export ALIBABA_REGION=ap-southeast-1
export ACR_NAMESPACE=...            # the namespace you created
export ACR_IMAGE="registry.$ALIBABA_REGION.aliyuncs.com/$ACR_NAMESPACE/vid2context:0.1.0"
docker login --username=<your Alibaba Cloud account name> "registry.$ALIBABA_REGION.aliyuncs.com"
docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -f deploy/containers/Dockerfile -t "$ACR_IMAGE" --push .

Function Compute pulls from ACR in the same region. Keep the repository private.

Function Compute#

Install Serverless Devs and add an AccessKey of a RAM user with AliyunFCFullAccess and AliyunContainerRegistryReadOnlyAccess:

npm install -g @serverless-devs/s
s config add          # interactive: choose Alibaba Cloud, alias "default"

Deploy:

KEY="$(openssl rand -hex 24)"; echo "your API key: $KEY"
export VID2CONTEXT_API_KEYS="client:read:$(printf %s "$KEY" | sha256sum | cut -d' ' -f1)"
s deploy -t deploy/containers/alibaba/s.yaml -y
s info -t deploy/containers/alibaba/s.yaml       # shows the HTTP trigger URL
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" "https://<trigger domain>/api/v1/transcript?url=https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw"

s.yaml reads ACR_IMAGE and VID2CONTEXT_API_KEYS from your shell, plus optional ALIBABA_REGION, ALIBABA_ACCESS (credential alias, default default) and FC_FUNCTION_NAME. Set VID2CONTEXT_API_KEYS every time you deploy: the HTTP trigger is anonymous, so the keys are what protects the API. The hashed form keeps the key itself out of the function's configuration.

The function: 2 vCPU, 4 GB memory, 900 s timeout, 4 concurrent requests per instance, health check on /api/v1/health, data on the temporary disk (VID2CONTEXT_HOME=/tmp/vid2context, 512 MB). Instances are ephemeral, so the library and downloaded models do not survive. To keep them, mount NAS (nasConfig) or OSS (ossMountConfig) and point VID2CONTEXT_HOME at the mount; as on any network filesystem, keep SQLite's library.db off OSS and use Postgres (DATABASE_URL, ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL) for a shared library.

Large images start slower on a cold start; ACR Enterprise Edition's image acceleration helps if that matters.

Serverless App Engine#

SAE runs the same image as an always-on application, without Function Compute's per-request timeout:

1. In the SAE console, create an application in the same region, deployment method "Image", and pick $ACR_IMAGE.
2. Port 8787, 2 cores and 4 GB, at least one instance.
3. Environment variables: VID2CONTEXT_API_KEYS (better: an SAE secret), plus any provider keys from .env.example.
4. Health checks (liveness and readiness): HTTP GET /api/v1/health on port 8787.
5. Storage: mount NAS at /data to keep the library and models across restarts.
6. Bind a public SLB or CLB for internet access.

Costs#

• ACR Personal Edition: free.
• Function Compute bills per vCPU-second, GB-second and request, and new accounts get a trial quota. An idle function costs nothing; the temporary disk is free up to 512 MB.
• SAE bills per instance-minute while instances run, so one always-on instance is a fixed monthly cost.

Check Alibaba Cloud's pricing pages for current numbers.

What was verified#

On 2026-11-14 the fc3 props in s.yaml, with its variables resolved, validated against the published schema of the Serverless Devs fc3 component (deploy/containers/test.sh). Nothing was deployed to Alibaba Cloud: no account was available, and s was not installed here.