Tars vs fabric8: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Tars and fabric8

Introduction:

Tars and fabric8 are two commonly used software development tools. While they have some similarities, they also have several key differences. In this article, we will highlight the main differences between Tars and fabric8.

1. Purpose: Tars is primarily a robust microservices framework and platform that enables efficient development, deployment, and management of microservices. On the other hand, fabric8 is a comprehensive platform for developing, deploying, and running cloud-native applications using Kubernetes and OpenShift technologies.

2. Technology Stack: Tars is mainly designed to work with C++ and supports other languages such as Java, Go, and PHP. It excels in service governance, distributed transactions, and other relevant features. In contrast, fabric8 is built on top of Kubernetes and OpenShift, providing a complete cloud-native platform that supports multiple programming languages, containers, and microservices.

3. Community and Support: Tars has a growing and active community of developers. It has been used in production by numerous companies and has a well-established support system. On the other hand, fabric8 is an open-source project with a large community and strong support from Red Hat, the company behind Kubernetes and OpenShift. Fabric8 benefits from the extensive resources and expertise of this community.

4. Integration and Tooling: Tars provides a set of tools and plugins specifically designed to support seamless integration into the microservices ecosystem. It offers various features like service discovery, load balancing, and performance monitoring. Fabric8, on the other hand, offers a wide range of tools and plugins for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications on Kubernetes and OpenShift. It provides an integrated development environment (IDE) and workflows for efficient development.

5. Scalability: Tars is built to handle large-scale microservices architectures with thousands of services and instances. It provides automatic load balancing and supports distributed deployment across multiple servers. Fabric8, on the other hand, leverages the scalability and elasticity of Kubernetes and OpenShift to efficiently manage applications at scale, using features like auto-scaling and container orchestration.

6. Enterprise Readiness: Tars has been widely adopted in various industries, demonstrating its stability, reliability, and suitability for enterprise-level deployments. It provides features like high availability, fault tolerance, and security. Fabric8, being backed by Red Hat, is known for its enterprise-grade capabilities and compliance with industry standards. It offers features like multi-tenancy, security controls, and seamless integration with other enterprise systems.

In summary, Tars is a powerful microservices framework focusing on service governance, while fabric8 is a comprehensive cloud-native platform built on Kubernetes and OpenShift technologies with extensive tools and integrations for building, deploying, and managing applications at scale.