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  1. Stackups
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  3. Container Registry
  4. Container Tools
  5. K9s vs Rancher

K9s vs Rancher

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rancher
Rancher
Stacks952
Followers1.5K
Votes644
K9s
K9s
Stacks75
Followers103
Votes2
GitHub Stars31.7K
Forks2.0K

K9s vs Rancher: What are the differences?

Key Differences between K9s and Rancher

  1. Installation and Deployment: K9s is a command-line tool that can be easily installed and deployed on any Kubernetes cluster, while Rancher is a comprehensive container management platform that requires a dedicated setup process and infrastructure.
  2. User Interface: K9s provides a terminal-based UI with a command prompt-style interface, making it suitable for advanced users who prefer working with command lines. In contrast, Rancher offers a web-based GUI that is more user-friendly and suitable for both beginners and advanced users.
  3. Feature Set: K9s focuses more on monitoring and managing Kubernetes clusters, providing features such as resource viewing, pod management, and log streaming. Rancher, on the other hand, offers a complete container orchestration platform with additional features like multi-cluster management, application catalog, and built-in CI/CD pipelines.
  4. Scalability and Flexibility: K9s is lightweight and can be used on any Kubernetes cluster, making it suitable for small to medium-sized deployments. Rancher, being a full-fledged container management platform, is designed for larger and more complex deployments, offering scalability and flexibility features like multi-cloud support and managed Kubernetes services.
  5. Community Support: K9s is an open-source project with an active community that provides support and frequent updates. Rancher, although it has a large community, is a commercial product backed by a company (Rancher Labs) that offers official support and enterprise-grade features.
  6. Integration and Extensibility: K9s integrates well with other command-line tools and can be customized using plugins and extensions. Rancher, being a standalone platform, offers native integrations with various cloud providers, monitoring tools, and Kubernetes ecosystem components, allowing for seamless integration and extensibility.

In Summary, K9s is a lightweight, command-line tool for monitoring and managing Kubernetes clusters, while Rancher is a comprehensive container management platform with a web-based GUI and additional features for larger deployments.

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Detailed Comparison

Rancher
Rancher
K9s
K9s

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

K9s provides a curses based terminal UI to interact with your Kubernetes clusters. The aim of this project is to make it easier to navigate, observe and manage your applications in the wild. K9s continually watches Kubernetes for changes and offers subsequent commands to interact with observed resources.

Manage Hosts, Deploy Containers, Monitor Resources;User Management & Collaboration;Native Docker APIs & Tools;Monitoring and Logging;Connect Containers, Manage Disks, Deploy Load Balancers;Docker App Catalog; Included Kubernetes Distribution;Included Docker Swarm Distribution; Included Mesos Distribution;Infrastructure Management
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
31.7K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
2.0K
Stacks
952
Stacks
75
Followers
1.5K
Followers
103
Votes
644
Votes
2
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 103
    Easy to use
  • 79
    Open source and totally free
  • 63
    Multi-host docker-compose support
  • 58
    Load balancing and health check included
  • 58
    Simple
Cons
  • 10
    Hosting Rancher can be complicated
Pros
  • 2
    Nice UI and fast way to manage my kubernetes clusters
Integrations
Jenkins
Jenkins
Datadog
Datadog
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
Docker Compose
Docker Compose
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
GitHub
GitHub
Docker
Docker
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Drone.io
Drone.io
Kubernetes
Kubernetes

What are some alternatives to Rancher, K9s?

Kubernetes

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

Docker Compose

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Portainer

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Codefresh

Codefresh

Automate and parallelize testing. Codefresh allows teams to spin up on-demand compositions to run unit and integration tests as part of the continuous integration process. Jenkins integration allows more complex pipelines.

CAST.AI

CAST.AI

It is an AI-driven cloud optimization platform for Kubernetes. Instantly cut your cloud bill, prevent downtime, and 10X the power of DevOps.

k3s

k3s

Certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Supports something as small as a Raspberry Pi or as large as an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server.

Flocker

Flocker

Flocker is a data volume manager and multi-host Docker cluster management tool. With it you can control your data using the same tools you use for your stateless applications. This means that you can run your databases, queues and key-value stores in Docker and move them around as easily as the rest of your app.

Kitematic

Kitematic

Simple Docker App management for Mac OS X

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