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Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?
Developers describe Azure Service Fabric as "Distributed systems platform that simplifies build, package, deploy, and management of scalable microservices apps". Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud apps. On the other hand, Kubernetes is detailed as "Manage a cluster of Linux containers as a single system to accelerate Dev and simplify Ops". 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.
Azure Service Fabric can be classified as a tool in the "Microservices Tools" category, while Kubernetes is grouped under "Container Tools".
Some of the features offered by Azure Service Fabric are:
- Simplify microservices development and application lifecycle management
- Reliably scale and orchestrate containers and microservices
- Data-aware platform for low-latency, high-throughput workloads with stateful containers or microservices
On the other hand, Kubernetes provides the following key features:
- 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
Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes are both open source tools. It seems that Kubernetes with 55.1K GitHub stars and 19.1K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Azure Service Fabric with 2.57K GitHub stars and 304 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Kubernetes has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1048 company stacks & 1099 developers stacks; compared to Azure Service Fabric, which is listed in 6 company stacks and 3 developer stacks.
Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:
- GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
- Respectively Git as revision control system
- SourceTree as Git GUI
- Visual Studio Code as IDE
- CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
- Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
- SonarQube as quality gate
- Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
- VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
- Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
- Heroku for deploying in test environments
- nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
- SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
- Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
- PostgreSQL as preferred database system
- Redis 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.
Pros of Azure Service Fabric
- Intelligent, fast, reliable5
- Open source3
- Superior programming models3
- More reliable than Kubernetes3
- Runs most of Azure core services3
- Reliability3
- Quickest recovery and healing in the world2
- Deploy anywhere1
- Is data storage technology1
- Battle hardened in Azure > 10 Years1
Pros of Kubernetes
- Leading docker container management solution162
- Simple and powerful127
- Open source104
- Backed by google75
- The right abstractions56
- Scale services24
- Replication controller19
- Permission managment10
- Cheap7
- Supports autoscaling7
- Simple7
- Reliable4
- Self-healing4
- No cloud platform lock-in4
- Quick cloud setup3
- Open, powerful, stable3
- Scalable3
- Promotes modern/good infrascture practice3
- Captain of Container Ship2
- A self healing environment with rich metadata2
- Cloud Agnostic2
- Runs on azure2
- Backed by Red Hat2
- Custom and extensibility2
- Golang1
- Expandable1
- Gke1
- Easy setup1
- Sfg1
- Everything of CaaS1
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Cons of Azure Service Fabric
Cons of Kubernetes
- Poor workflow for development15
- Steep learning curve15
- Orchestrates only infrastructure8
- High resource requirements for on-prem clusters4
- Too heavy for simple systems2
- Additional vendor lock-in (Docker)1
- More moving parts to secure1
- Additional Technology Overhead1