Turn Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes

Containerized has changed the way we deploy software and micro-service development. If you've just heard of containers, this blog helps you get started.

What is container orchestration

Containers can package services into basic units, and you can deploy them anywhere: local machines, test environments, or production systems. In a production environment, however, you cannot run all the containers on a single machine because the resources of the system are exhausted. You need multiple machines (or nodes) to run as clusters (different machines communicate over the network) and then deploy the containers to the cluster. Now the question becomes, if I have multiple machines/nodes in a cluster, how do I decide which machine the container is running on? With the Orchestration software, you just need to tell it that I want to deploy the container and leave the rest to the Orchestration software.

The Orchestration software is responsible for the following points:

• Select the machine that best fits the deployment container. The best thing to refer to is having the most free resources, or if the container can get more running memory, such as Redis.
• Machine failure can automatically deploy the container on the faulty machine to other nodes.
• If the cluster adds a new machine, rebalance the container's allocation.
• If the container fails, restart it.
• ...

Now that you understand why container orchestration is needed, let's take a look at the two most popular options and the contrast between them today.

Docker Swarm

Swarm is the development of native cluster management engines for Docker. Any tool, service or software adapted to the Docker container is well-compatible with swarm. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of some Docker swarm:

Advantages:

• Easy to get started, "out of the box" user experience.
• 0 "single point of Failure" (single-point-of-failure) architecture.
• Automatically generate certificates, which provide security by default.
• Backward-compatible components.
• Open source

Disadvantages:

• In the project start/early development phase. We do not recommend the use of commercial applications. Over time, it will be more mature.
• Features are simple and limited.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is a Google-led production-Ready, enterprise-class, mature orchestration platform. Its pros and cons are:

Advantages:

• Production-Ready, enterprise-class. It is used by many companies for scale production environments.
• It is more mature than Docker Swarm.
• It can be used in many cloud environments such as public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, etc.
• Modular.
• Self-healing capabilities: Automatic layout, automatic restart, automatic backup, auto scaling.
• Open source.
• Because of its modular design, it can be used to deploy any architecture.

Disadvantages:

• Difficult to deploy. If you don't use cloud service azure,google or Amazon, it's very difficult to build a kubernetes environment in your cluster. Most cloud providers offer a one-click installation feature.
• A steeper learning curve than Docker swarm. It does not use the Docker CLI.

Cloudboost production environment uses a 60-node Kubunertes cluster, we are a service-free +baas (backend as a service) architecture, developers do not care about repetitive tasks like: Authentication, notification, mail services, management and expansion of databases, files, caches, etc. This reduces the development time by half. We use MongoDB and Redis clusters for data storage and NODEJS support for most of our microservices. Cloudboost is fully open source and follows the Apache 2 license Open Source protocol, so you can modify the code and install it on your server for free. GitHub address point here.

We also provide a Docker Cloud/compose file that you can use to install cloudboost directly.

If you want to learn more about how we use kubernetes in a production environment. You can read this blog post.

I recommend Docker Swarm if you want to quickly launch a cluster, do not run critical applications, or get the QuickStart orchestration tools. If your scene is close to the business environment, you should consider kubernetes.

Turn Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes