Azure Service Fabric vs Dapr: What are the differences?

Introduction

Azure Service Fabric and Dapr are two popular platforms used for building and deploying scalable and reliable applications. While both offer similar functionalities, they have some key differences.

1. Programming Model: Azure Service Fabric provides a more complex, low-level programming model that allows developers to build applications using stateful or stateless services. On the other hand, Dapr offers a simpler, high-level programming model that enables developers to build applications using microservices, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.

2. Deployment Flexibility: Azure Service Fabric allows applications to be deployed to a variety of platforms, including Azure, on-premises, and even other cloud providers. Dapr, on the other hand, focuses on a cloud-agnostic approach and can run on any infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Azure, and other cloud providers.

3. Service Discovery and Communication: Azure Service Fabric provides built-in service discovery capabilities and supports reliable inter-service communication within the cluster. Dapr, on the other hand, relies on external service discovery mechanisms and supports inter-service communication using sidecar proxies or standard protocols like gRPC or HTTP.

4. State Management: Azure Service Fabric includes a reliable, distributed state management system that allows applications to store and retrieve state within the cluster. Dapr, on the other hand, does not provide a built-in state management system but can integrate with external state stores like Redis or Cosmos DB.

5. Operational Management: Azure Service Fabric provides a comprehensive set of tools and APIs for monitoring, diagnosing, and managing applications and clusters, including automatic scaling and lifecycle management features. Dapr, on the other hand, focuses more on the application logic and delegates operational concerns to the underlying platform or infrastructure.

6. Community and Ecosystem: Azure Service Fabric has been around for a longer time and has a larger community and ecosystem with a wide range of tools, libraries, and resources available. Dapr, being a relatively new platform, is still growing its community and ecosystem but benefits from the popularity of containers, Kubernetes, and microservices.

In summary, Azure Service Fabric provides a low-level, flexible programming model with built-in state management and comprehensive operational management features, suitable for complex and scalable applications. Dapr, on the other hand, offers a high-level, cloud-agnostic programming model with a focus on simplicity and interoperability, making it well-suited for building microservices-based applications on any infrastructure.