The modern IT sector has advanced a lot. It has also attained a major of the all-new level of awareness and a basic new concept concerning time, energy, assistance, and support. The entire concept here goes to the updated and upgraded cloud services. With the implementation and assistance of the service, the process of container orchestration and data management has indeed become very easy and convenient and easier for the managers. There are a lot of tools or services available in the market to handle these tasks.
However, the two most powerful IT cloud container management platforms have entirely changed the way of working. These two are “Kubernetes” and “Docker Swarm”. Both this software have their importance and specialty and is being used by various industries across the globe for different purposes and needs and requirements.
Well, with this said let us proceed further and understand these two platforms in a way far better way and along with that explore the difference between them too as well. Today in this article we will discuss the below-mentioned topics which will give more clarity and understanding of the service.
| Index of the Article |
What is Kubernetes? What is Docker Swarm? Difference Between Kubernetes and Docker Swarm Pros and Cons of Kubernetes Pros and Cons of Docker Swarm Final Words/ Conclusion |
What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is a result of Google’s excellence in running production workloads. It is also a fact that gigantic and big IT firm has been working on this platform for over decade-plus years. As per its official website, ‘Kubernetes is an open-source system that works for automating management, scaling & deployment of containerized applications’. It works with a principle that allows it to scale & manage billions of containers without increasing the operations team. Furthermore, it is an open-source platform, by which, you can take all the advantages of hybrid, public, or on-premises cloud infrastructure. It also lets you effortlessly move workloads to where it matters to you.
What is Docker Swarm?
Docker Swarm is a clustering and scheduling tool specifically for Docker containers. Working on the basic Docker API & networking, it allows users to drop the work anywhere they want. Docker Swarm works on the following principles that make it one of the best in the market.
- Highly responsive yet easy interface with a ‘start working’ approach.
- Zero percent failure architecture.
- Backward compatibility with existing components.
- Default security with automatically generated certificates.
Difference Between Kubernetes and Docker Swarm
Now comes another stage of the service where we are discussing and sharing the core difference between Kubernetes and Docker Swarm. These are the services that are one of the most advanced, highly used, and gigantic platforms in the IT sector which contains cloud container management.
| Key Features | Kubernetes | Docker Swarm |
| Application Definition | An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services in Kubernetes. | Applications can be deployed as services (or microservices) in a Docker Swarm. YAML files can be used to specify a multi-container. Furthermore, Docker Compose can deploy the application. |
| Installation & Set-up | The installation and set-up work was undertaken here is the manual concept. It requires validation of serious planning to keep Kubernetes up and running. The installation instruction differs and that is all according to the operating systems & their service providers. Apart from this, you must also keep the cluster configuration in mind such as IP addresses of a node. | As compared to Kubernetes, the installation process of Docker Swarm is easier and simpler. Users will have to learn just a single set of tools to build upon environment & configuration. Apart from this, Docker Swarm also offers the facility for a new node to join an existing cluster either as a manager or as a worker. |
| Storage | It automatically mounts the storage system of your choice, either from local storage, a public cloud provider (GCP or AWS), or a network storage system (NFS, iSCSI, Gluster, Flocker, Ceph, or Cinder). | Docker containers come with two options to store files in the host machine which allows the files to persist even after stopping the container: bind mounts & volumes. If you’re running Docker on Linux, you can also use a tmpfs mount. |
| Rolling Application Upgrades & Rollback | In Kubernetes, Rolling updates let deployments update to execute with zero downtime simply by updating the pods’ instances with new ones incrementally. Moreover, it also provides the facility to revert the Deployment update to the previous one. | In Docker Swarm, the user will need to update every micro application one by one. In case the operation gets crashed in the middle, it automatically stops and offers us time to manage things. |
| Working on two systems | The knowledge here that needs is of having CLI (Command Line Interface) that assist in running of Kubernetes on top of Docker. Users must know Docker CLI to navigate within a structure and then supplement Kubernetes’ common language infrastructure to run for those programs. | As Docker Swarm is a tool of Docker itself, the same language is used to navigate within a structure. This offers variability and speed to this tool and gives Docker a significant usability edge. |
| Load balancing | Ingress is used as the most popular & the most flexible method, which operates employing a controller in a specialized Kubernetes pod. It comes with an Ingress resource—a bundle of traffic governing rules and a daemon that applies those rules at appropriate positions. The controller is blessed with built-in features for load balancing coupled with a few reasonably sophisticated capabilities. | This platform allows its load balancer to run on every available node. Moreover, it loads balance requests across every container on every host in the cluster |
| Auto-scaling for the application | The Horizontal Pod Autoscaling helps Kubernetes to scale the number of pods automatically in a replication controller, replica set, or deployment based on the CPU utilization. | There is no automatic scaling option available for Docker Swarm. However, users can use a code to do that auto-scaling task. |
| Scalability | Kubernetes is a complex yet all-in-one system as it offers a unified set of APIs and strongly guarantees regarding the cluster state that slows downscaling & container deployment. | Kubernetes is a complex yet all-in-one system as it offers a unified set of APIs and strongly guarantees regarding the cluster state that slows downscaling & container deployment. |
| Health checks | Self-healing is one of the most admiring facilities in Kubernetes. It has a facility to restart the failed containers. Moreover, for a dead node, it also provides a facility for rescheduling and replacement of containers. Apart from this, it ends containers that do not respond. | Docker Swarm comes with native health check implementation after version 1.12. The HEALTHCHECK instruction declares the health check command that can be used to determine whether or not the service status of the container master process is normal. |
| High availability | Docker Swarm comes with native health check implementation after version 1.12. The HEALTHCHECK instruction declares the health check command that can be used to determine whether or not the service status of the container master process is normal. | Docker Swarm also provides high availability as services can be replicated in Swarm nodes. Swarm manager nodes are responsible for the whole cluster and manage the resources of worker nodes in Docker Swarm. |
| Networking | Kubernetes network is flat, as it allows all pods to communicate with each other. Its model requires two CIDRs, in which, the first one requires pods to get an IP address, and the other is for services. | In Docker Swarm, an overlay network of services emerges from the combination of a node and a cluster. That overlay network spans every host in the Swarm. It then hosts only the Docker bridge network for containers. In this, users also get an option to encrypt container data traffic while making an overlay network. |
Advantages and Disadvantages of Kubernetes
Well till now we have seen the basic and core details of the services. Now let us proceed further and check on some of the benefits and drawbacks of the said services. Hence, the details for the same are as shared below.
Benefits
- The backup planning of the service is entirely based on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).
- It has a giant as well as the biggest community among container orchestration tools including over 50,000 commits and 1200 contributors.
- It is an open-source and modular tool that works with any operating system.
- It provides easy service organization with pods.
Drawbacks
- The installation process of Kubernetes is doing by self is tedious and this, therefore, demands a steep learning curve.
- Kubernetes still needs to have a separate set of tools for management, including kubectl CLI.
- Kubernetes has compatibility issues with current Docker CLI and Compose tools.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Docker Swarm
Let us take a look at the pros and cons of Docker Swarm below.
Benefits
- It is easy to install with a fast setup.
- It is simpler to deploy and Swarm mode is included in the Docker engine.
- It has an easier learning curve.
- It integrates smoothly with Docker CLI and Docker Compose.
Drawbacks
- It offers limited functionality.
- It has limited fault tolerance.
- It has a smaller community and project as compared to the Kubernetes community.
- Services can be scaled manually in it.
Summing-up
After discussing so much about these two market leaders in container management, it is still a bit tough to say which one is good and which one is not. It is that both these platforms own their uniqueness and this makes them different from each other. Both of them have been developed for different kinds of industries (i.e. their management type), hence, users must keep all the points in mind before choosing any one of them.
Feel free to contact us today to have further discussion on the service and how we at Cloud Stack Group work on the different sets of projects with full 100% dedication and customer satisfaction.
