AWS Firecracker vs Kubernetes

Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

AWS Firecracker

Stacks6

Followers34

Votes0

GitHub Stars31.0K

Forks2.1K

AWS Firecracker vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare the key differences between AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes. Both Firecracker and Kubernetes are popular technologies in the field of cloud computing and container orchestration.

Performance and Resource Isolation: One major difference between AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes is their approach to performance and resource isolation. Firecracker is designed to provide a lightweight and secure environment for running virtual machines (VMs). It achieves this by using a minimal kernel and a microVM architecture, which allows for fast startup times and strong isolation between VMs. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that uses containerization technology to isolate application workloads. While containers offer good performance, they may not provide the same level of isolation as VMs.
Container vs. Virtual Machine: Another key difference between AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes is the level of abstraction they provide. Firecracker operates at the level of virtual machines, allowing for the creation and management of multiple lightweight VM instances. This makes Firecracker well-suited for running applications that require strong isolation and security. Kubernetes, on the other hand, operates at the level of containers, which are lighter-weight and provide a more portable way to package and deploy applications. This makes Kubernetes a popular choice for managing containerized applications at scale.
Orchestration vs. Hypervisor: AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes also differ in their primary focus. Firecracker is primarily a hypervisor designed to provide a secure and efficient execution environment for VMs. It focuses on managing the underlying infrastructure and provides APIs for orchestrating VM instances. On the other hand, Kubernetes is an orchestration platform that focuses on managing the lifecycle of containerized applications. It provides features such as auto-scaling, load balancing, and service discovery that are essential for running applications in a distributed and scalable manner.
Bare-Metal vs. Cloud Environment: Firecracker and Kubernetes also target different deployment environments. Firecracker is designed to run on bare-metal servers or lightweight hypervisors, making it a good choice for on-premises or edge computing scenarios. On the other hand, Kubernetes is commonly used in cloud environments, where it can take advantage of cloud provider features such as auto-scaling groups and managed Kubernetes services. Kubernetes also has a broader ecosystem of tools and integrations for cloud-native application development.
Control Plane vs. Runtime: The architectural difference between Firecracker and Kubernetes is also worth highlighting. Firecracker focuses on providing a lightweight hypervisor for running VMs, but it does not provide a complete control plane for managing and orchestrating VM instances. In contrast, Kubernetes provides a full-featured control plane that includes components such as the API server, scheduler, and controller manager. This makes Kubernetes a more comprehensive solution for managing containerized workloads, but it also adds complexity compared to the more focused approach of Firecracker.
Vendor Lock-in: Finally, AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes differ in terms of vendor lock-in. Firecracker is an open-source project that can be run on any infrastructure, whether on-premises or in the cloud. This provides greater flexibility and avoids dependency on a specific cloud provider. Kubernetes, on the other hand, has become the de facto standard for container orchestration and is closely tied to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. While Kubernetes can be run on any infrastructure, taking full advantage of cloud provider-specific features often requires using their managed Kubernetes services.

In summary, AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes differ in their approach to performance and resource isolation, the level of abstraction they provide, their primary focus on orchestration or hypervisor, the deployment environment they target, the architectural difference between control plane and runtime, and the level of vendor lock-in they entail.

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Advice on Kubernetes, AWS Firecracker

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.

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Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	AWS Firecracker
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.	Firecracker is an open source virtualization technology that is purpose-built for creating and managing secure, multi-tenant container and function-based services that provide serverless operational models. Firecracker runs workloads in lightweight virtual machines, called microVMs, which combine the security and isolation properties provided by hardware virtualization technology with the speed and flexibility of containers.
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	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 31.0K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 2.1K
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 6
Followers 52.8K	Followers 34
Votes 685	Votes 0
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	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Kubernetes, AWS Firecracker?

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.

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.

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.

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.

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.

Google Cloud Run

A managed compute platform that enables you to run stateless containers that are invocable via HTTP requests. It's serverless by abstracting away all infrastructure management.

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.

Serverless

Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

Related Comparisons

AWS Firecracker vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

Performance and Resource Isolation: One major difference between AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes is their approach to performance and resource isolation. Firecracker is designed to provide a lightweight and secure environment for running virtual machines (VMs). It achieves this by using a minimal kernel and a microVM architecture, which allows for fast startup times and strong isolation between VMs. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that uses containerization technology to isolate application workloads. While containers offer good performance, they may not provide the same level of isolation as VMs.
Container vs. Virtual Machine: Another key difference between AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes is the level of abstraction they provide. Firecracker operates at the level of virtual machines, allowing for the creation and management of multiple lightweight VM instances. This makes Firecracker well-suited for running applications that require strong isolation and security. Kubernetes, on the other hand, operates at the level of containers, which are lighter-weight and provide a more portable way to package and deploy applications. This makes Kubernetes a popular choice for managing containerized applications at scale.
Orchestration vs. Hypervisor: AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes also differ in their primary focus. Firecracker is primarily a hypervisor designed to provide a secure and efficient execution environment for VMs. It focuses on managing the underlying infrastructure and provides APIs for orchestrating VM instances. On the other hand, Kubernetes is an orchestration platform that focuses on managing the lifecycle of containerized applications. It provides features such as auto-scaling, load balancing, and service discovery that are essential for running applications in a distributed and scalable manner.
Bare-Metal vs. Cloud Environment: Firecracker and Kubernetes also target different deployment environments. Firecracker is designed to run on bare-metal servers or lightweight hypervisors, making it a good choice for on-premises or edge computing scenarios. On the other hand, Kubernetes is commonly used in cloud environments, where it can take advantage of cloud provider features such as auto-scaling groups and managed Kubernetes services. Kubernetes also has a broader ecosystem of tools and integrations for cloud-native application development.
Control Plane vs. Runtime: The architectural difference between Firecracker and Kubernetes is also worth highlighting. Firecracker focuses on providing a lightweight hypervisor for running VMs, but it does not provide a complete control plane for managing and orchestrating VM instances. In contrast, Kubernetes provides a full-featured control plane that includes components such as the API server, scheduler, and controller manager. This makes Kubernetes a more comprehensive solution for managing containerized workloads, but it also adds complexity compared to the more focused approach of Firecracker.
Vendor Lock-in: Finally, AWS Firecracker and Kubernetes differ in terms of vendor lock-in. Firecracker is an open-source project that can be run on any infrastructure, whether on-premises or in the cloud. This provides greater flexibility and avoids dependency on a specific cloud provider. Kubernetes, on the other hand, has become the de facto standard for container orchestration and is closely tied to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure. While Kubernetes can be run on any infrastructure, taking full advantage of cloud provider-specific features often requires using their managed Kubernetes services.

AWS Firecracker vs Kubernetes

Overview

AWS Firecracker vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?