Codefresh includes a handy mechanism (based on Docker compose) that can help you run sidecar containers along your main pipeline. Here is a very simple example.

{% highlight yaml %}

{% raw %}

This pipeline will run integration tests during the freestyle step called`my_integration_tests` and at that point a Redis instance will be available at hostname`my-redis-db-host` and port 6379. Note how in this example, the service container is placed at the root of the pipeline (as opposed to inside a specific step). This ensures that the Redis instance is running for[the duration of the pipeline]({{site.baseurl}}/docs/codefresh-yaml/service-containers/#running-services-for-the-duration-of-the-pipeline).

The main choice that you have is which files to place on the volume. For example, Node.js uses the folder`node_modules` for its dependencies which are placed under the project folder[which is automatically placed under the volume]({{site.baseurl}}/docs/configure-ci-cd-pipeline/introduction-to-codefresh-pipelines/#cloning-the-source-code). So all contents of`node_modules` will be cached by default without any further action on your part.

with your own runtime to activate volume caching.

The simplest way to see this caching mechanism in action is this pipeline: