AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kubernetes

Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Stacks12.8K

Followers8.8K

Votes59

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kubernetes

Scalability and Flexibility: AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) allows for horizontal scaling by automatically distributing incoming traffic across multiple instances, optimizing the performance and allowing for easy capacity adjustments. On the other hand, Kubernetes provides scalability and flexibility by allowing the deployment and management of containerized applications across a cluster of nodes, making it easier to scale up or down based on the demand.
Management and Control: ELB is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services, which means Amazon takes care of the infrastructure, maintenance, and upgrades. It simplifies the management and control of load balancing resources. Kubernetes, on the other hand, offers a more comprehensive set of tools and features for managing containerized applications, including automated deployment, scaling, and monitoring. It provides more control and flexibility, but requires more expertise to manage effectively.
Platform Independence: ELB is tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem and is designed specifically for hosting applications on Amazon's cloud platform. It offers seamless integration with other AWS services, such as Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, and IAM. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is platform agnostic and can be deployed on a variety of infrastructure providers, including cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as on-premises servers. This makes Kubernetes a more portable and flexible solution for multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments.
Service Discovery and Load Balancing: ELB primarily focuses on load balancing incoming traffic to a group of instances, providing high availability and fault tolerance. It offers basic service discovery features, but is not specifically designed for container-based architectures. Kubernetes, on the other hand, provides a more advanced service discovery mechanism, allowing containers to find and communicate with each other within a cluster. It includes built-in load balancing capabilities for distributing traffic to containers within the cluster, ensuring efficient resource utilization and high availability.
Lifecycle Management and Rollouts: ELB provides basic lifecycle management capabilities through integration with AWS Auto Scaling, allowing for automatic scaling based on demand. However, it does not have built-in support for managing application lifecycle, including automated deployments and rollbacks. Kubernetes, on the other hand, offers advanced deployment features, such as rolling updates, canary deployments, and rollback capabilities. It allows for seamless updates and rollbacks of containerized applications, reducing downtime and minimizing the impact of changes.
Monitoring and Logging: ELB provides basic logging and monitoring features through integration with AWS CloudWatch. It provides metrics and logs related to the load balancer and its targets, helping to optimize performance and troubleshoot issues. Kubernetes offers a more comprehensive monitoring and logging solution through integration with third-party tools like Prometheus and Grafana. It provides detailed insights into container health, resource usage, and application performance, allowing for better observability and proactive management of the cluster.

In Summary, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) is a managed load balancing service that simplifies the management and control of load balancing resources in the AWS ecosystem. It offers scalability, flexibility, and seamless integration with other AWS services. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a comprehensive container orchestration platform that provides advanced deployment, management, and monitoring capabilities. It is platform-agnostic, portable, and offers more control and flexibility, making it suitable for multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments.

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Advice on Kubernetes, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

Decidedon

GitHub

GitHub Pages

Markdown

Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

@{GitHub}|tool:27| (incl. @{GitHub Pages}|tool:683|/@{Markdown}|tool:1147| for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
Respectively @{Git}|tool:1046| as revision control system
@{SourceTree}|tool:1599| as @{Git}|tool:1046| GUI
@{Visual Studio Code}|tool:4202| as IDE
@{CircleCI}|tool:190| for continuous integration (automatize development process)
@{Prettier}|tool:7035| / @{TSLint}|tool:5561| / @{ESLint}|tool:3337| as code linter
@{SonarQube}|tool:2638| as quality gate
@{Docker}|tool:586| as container management (incl. @{Docker Compose}|tool:3136| for multi-container application management)
@{VirtualBox}|tool:774| for operating system simulation tests
@{Kubernetes}|tool:1885| as cluster management for docker containers
@{Heroku}|tool:133| for deploying in test environments
@{nginx}|tool:1052| as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
@{SSLMate}|tool:2752| (using @{OpenSSL}|tool:3091|) for certificate management
@{Amazon EC2}|tool:18| (incl. @{Amazon S3}|tool:25|) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
@{PostgreSQL}|tool:1028| as preferred database system
@{Redis}|tool:1031| as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.

12.8M views12.8M

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
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.	With Elastic Load Balancing, you can add and remove EC2 instances as your needs change without disrupting the overall flow of information. If one EC2 instance fails, Elastic Load Balancing automatically reroutes the traffic to the remaining running EC2 instances. If the failed EC2 instance is restored, Elastic Load Balancing restores the traffic to that instance. Elastic Load Balancing offers clients a single point of contact, and it can also serve as the first line of defense against attacks on your network. You can offload the work of encryption and decryption to Elastic Load Balancing, so your servers can focus on their main task.
Lightweight, simple and accessible;Built for a multi-cloud world, public, private or hybrid;Highly modular, designed so that all of its components are easily swappable	Distribution of requests to Amazon EC2 instances (servers) in multiple Availability Zones so that the risk of overloading one single instance is minimized. And if an entire Availability Zone goes offline, Elastic Load Balancing routes traffic to instances in other Availability Zones.;Continuous monitoring of the health of Amazon EC2 instances registered with the load balancer so that requests are sent only to the healthy instances. If an instance becomes unhealthy, Elastic Load Balancing stops sending traffic to that instance and spreads the load across the remaining healthy instances.;Support for end-to-end traffic encryption on those networks that use secure (HTTPS/SSL) connections.;The ability to take over the encryption and decryption work from the Amazon EC2 instances, and manage it centrally on the load balancer.;Support for the sticky session feature, which is the ability to "stick" user sessions to specific Amazon EC2 instances.;Association of the load balancer with your domain name. Because the load balancer is the only computer that is exposed to the Internet, you don’t have to create and manage public domain names for the instances that the load balancer manages. You can point the instance's domain records at the load balancer instead and scale as needed (either adding or removing capacity) without having to update the records with each scaling activity.;When used in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), support for creation and management of security groups associated with your load balancer to provide additional networking and security options.;Supports use of both the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
Statistics
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 12.8K
Followers 52.8K	Followers 8.8K
Votes 685	Votes 59
Pros & Cons
Pros 166 Leading docker container management solution 130 Simple and powerful 108 Open source 76 Backed by google 58 The right abstractions Cons 16 Steep learning curve 15 Poor workflow for development 8 Orchestrates only infrastructure 4 High resource requirements for on-prem clusters 2 Too heavy for simple systems	Pros 48 Easy 8 ASG integration 2 Reliability 1 Coding 0 SSL offloading
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	Amazon EC2

What are some alternatives to Kubernetes, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)?

Rancher

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.

HAProxy

HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.

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

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 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

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.

Traefik

A modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components and configures itself automatically and dynamically.

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

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

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.

Related Comparisons

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Stacks12.8K

Followers8.8K

Votes59

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kubernetes

Scalability and Flexibility: AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) allows for horizontal scaling by automatically distributing incoming traffic across multiple instances, optimizing the performance and allowing for easy capacity adjustments. On the other hand, Kubernetes provides scalability and flexibility by allowing the deployment and management of containerized applications across a cluster of nodes, making it easier to scale up or down based on the demand.
Management and Control: ELB is a fully managed service provided by Amazon Web Services, which means Amazon takes care of the infrastructure, maintenance, and upgrades. It simplifies the management and control of load balancing resources. Kubernetes, on the other hand, offers a more comprehensive set of tools and features for managing containerized applications, including automated deployment, scaling, and monitoring. It provides more control and flexibility, but requires more expertise to manage effectively.
Platform Independence: ELB is tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem and is designed specifically for hosting applications on Amazon's cloud platform. It offers seamless integration with other AWS services, such as Auto Scaling, CloudWatch, and IAM. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is platform agnostic and can be deployed on a variety of infrastructure providers, including cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as on-premises servers. This makes Kubernetes a more portable and flexible solution for multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments.
Service Discovery and Load Balancing: ELB primarily focuses on load balancing incoming traffic to a group of instances, providing high availability and fault tolerance. It offers basic service discovery features, but is not specifically designed for container-based architectures. Kubernetes, on the other hand, provides a more advanced service discovery mechanism, allowing containers to find and communicate with each other within a cluster. It includes built-in load balancing capabilities for distributing traffic to containers within the cluster, ensuring efficient resource utilization and high availability.
Lifecycle Management and Rollouts: ELB provides basic lifecycle management capabilities through integration with AWS Auto Scaling, allowing for automatic scaling based on demand. However, it does not have built-in support for managing application lifecycle, including automated deployments and rollbacks. Kubernetes, on the other hand, offers advanced deployment features, such as rolling updates, canary deployments, and rollback capabilities. It allows for seamless updates and rollbacks of containerized applications, reducing downtime and minimizing the impact of changes.
Monitoring and Logging: ELB provides basic logging and monitoring features through integration with AWS CloudWatch. It provides metrics and logs related to the load balancer and its targets, helping to optimize performance and troubleshoot issues. Kubernetes offers a more comprehensive monitoring and logging solution through integration with third-party tools like Prometheus and Grafana. It provides detailed insights into container health, resource usage, and application performance, allowing for better observability and proactive management of the cluster.

Advice on Kubernetes, AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

Decidedon

GitHub

GitHub Pages

Markdown

Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

@{GitHub}|tool:27| (incl. @{GitHub Pages}|tool:683|/@{Markdown}|tool:1147| for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
Respectively @{Git}|tool:1046| as revision control system
@{SourceTree}|tool:1599| as @{Git}|tool:1046| GUI
@{Visual Studio Code}|tool:4202| as IDE
@{CircleCI}|tool:190| for continuous integration (automatize development process)
@{Prettier}|tool:7035| / @{TSLint}|tool:5561| / @{ESLint}|tool:3337| as code linter
@{SonarQube}|tool:2638| as quality gate
@{Docker}|tool:586| as container management (incl. @{Docker Compose}|tool:3136| for multi-container application management)
@{VirtualBox}|tool:774| for operating system simulation tests
@{Kubernetes}|tool:1885| as cluster management for docker containers
@{Heroku}|tool:133| for deploying in test environments
@{nginx}|tool:1052| as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
@{SSLMate}|tool:2752| (using @{OpenSSL}|tool:3091|) for certificate management
@{Amazon EC2}|tool:18| (incl. @{Amazon S3}|tool:25|) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
@{PostgreSQL}|tool:1028| as preferred database system
@{Redis}|tool:1031| as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.

12.8M views12.8M

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
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.	With Elastic Load Balancing, you can add and remove EC2 instances as your needs change without disrupting the overall flow of information. If one EC2 instance fails, Elastic Load Balancing automatically reroutes the traffic to the remaining running EC2 instances. If the failed EC2 instance is restored, Elastic Load Balancing restores the traffic to that instance. Elastic Load Balancing offers clients a single point of contact, and it can also serve as the first line of defense against attacks on your network. You can offload the work of encryption and decryption to Elastic Load Balancing, so your servers can focus on their main task.
Lightweight, simple and accessible;Built for a multi-cloud world, public, private or hybrid;Highly modular, designed so that all of its components are easily swappable	Distribution of requests to Amazon EC2 instances (servers) in multiple Availability Zones so that the risk of overloading one single instance is minimized. And if an entire Availability Zone goes offline, Elastic Load Balancing routes traffic to instances in other Availability Zones.;Continuous monitoring of the health of Amazon EC2 instances registered with the load balancer so that requests are sent only to the healthy instances. If an instance becomes unhealthy, Elastic Load Balancing stops sending traffic to that instance and spreads the load across the remaining healthy instances.;Support for end-to-end traffic encryption on those networks that use secure (HTTPS/SSL) connections.;The ability to take over the encryption and decryption work from the Amazon EC2 instances, and manage it centrally on the load balancer.;Support for the sticky session feature, which is the ability to "stick" user sessions to specific Amazon EC2 instances.;Association of the load balancer with your domain name. Because the load balancer is the only computer that is exposed to the Internet, you don’t have to create and manage public domain names for the instances that the load balancer manages. You can point the instance's domain records at the load balancer instead and scale as needed (either adding or removing capacity) without having to update the records with each scaling activity.;When used in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), support for creation and management of security groups associated with your load balancer to provide additional networking and security options.;Supports use of both the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
Statistics
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 12.8K
Followers 52.8K	Followers 8.8K
Votes 685	Votes 59
Pros & Cons
Pros 166 Leading docker container management solution 130 Simple and powerful 108 Open source 76 Backed by google 58 The right abstractions Cons 16 Steep learning curve 15 Poor workflow for development 8 Orchestrates only infrastructure 4 High resource requirements for on-prem clusters 2 Too heavy for simple systems	Pros 48 Easy 8 ASG integration 2 Reliability 1 Coding 0 SSL offloading
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	Amazon EC2

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kubernetes

Overview

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?