Envoy vs Kubernetes

Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

Envoy

Stacks304

Followers546

Votes9

GitHub Stars27.0K

Forks5.1K

Envoy vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare and highlight the key differences between Envoy and Kubernetes, two popular technologies in the world of containerization and microservices.

Networking Model: Envoy is primarily a high-performance, extensible proxy server that enables efficient and secure communication between services within a network. It focuses on providing advanced traffic management capabilities, such as load balancing, circuit breaking, and observability. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that takes care of container deployments, scaling, and management across a cluster of nodes. While Kubernetes also offers built-in load balancing, it does not offer the same level of advanced networking features as Envoy.
Deployment Flexibility: Kubernetes allows you to deploy and manage various types of applications, not just microservices, making it a more versatile and general-purpose solution. It provides powerful deployment mechanisms such as rolling updates, canary deployments, and automatic scaling based on resource utilization. Envoy, on the other hand, is specifically designed for microservices architectures and excels at handling east-west traffic between services within a network. It is often used as a sidecar proxy alongside application containers, adding an extra layer of functionality and control.
Configuration Language: Envoy has its own declarative configuration language called Configuration Discovery Service (CDS). It allows you to define the behavior of the proxy server and its interaction with other services using a JSON or YAML-based syntax. Kubernetes, on the other hand, uses YAML files to define the desired state of applications, including containers, volumes, and networking. YAML is more widely adopted and easier to work with for developers familiar with Kubernetes.
Service Discovery: Kubernetes includes a built-in service discovery and DNS system that automatically assigns and resolves IP addresses to services within the cluster. This enables easy and dynamic inter-service communication. Envoy also supports service discovery, but it provides additional features like intelligent load balancing and health checking. Envoy can integrate with various service discovery mechanisms, including Kubernetes' own service discovery, to provide enhanced capabilities.
Observability and Monitoring: Envoy offers powerful built-in observability features, including detailed logging, distributed tracing, and metrics collection. It integrates seamlessly with popular observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Jaeger. Kubernetes also provides monitoring capabilities through its built-in metrics server, but it may require additional tooling and configuration to achieve the same level of observability as Envoy.
Platform Maturity: Kubernetes is a mature platform with a large community and ecosystem. It has been widely adopted and is backed by major cloud providers, making it a reliable choice for production deployments. Envoy, although it has gained significant traction and popularity, is a relatively newer technology compared to Kubernetes. While it has a growing community and active development, it may not have the same level of maturity or industry support as Kubernetes.

In summary, Envoy is a high-performance proxy server with advanced networking capabilities, specifically designed for microservices architectures. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a container orchestration platform that provides deployment and management features for various types of applications, with built-in networking capabilities. The choice between Envoy and Kubernetes depends on the specific requirements and nature of the applications or environments they are being used in.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Kubernetes, Envoy

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	Envoy
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.	Originally built at Lyft, Envoy is a high performance C++ distributed proxy designed for single services and applications, as well as a communication bus and “universal data plane” designed for large microservice “service mesh” architectures.
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 27.0K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 5.1K
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 304
Followers 52.8K	Followers 546
Votes 685	Votes 9
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 9 GRPC-Web
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Kubernetes, Envoy?

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.

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

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.

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.

Related Comparisons

Envoy vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

In this article, we will compare and highlight the key differences between Envoy and Kubernetes, two popular technologies in the world of containerization and microservices.

Networking Model: Envoy is primarily a high-performance, extensible proxy server that enables efficient and secure communication between services within a network. It focuses on providing advanced traffic management capabilities, such as load balancing, circuit breaking, and observability. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that takes care of container deployments, scaling, and management across a cluster of nodes. While Kubernetes also offers built-in load balancing, it does not offer the same level of advanced networking features as Envoy.
Deployment Flexibility: Kubernetes allows you to deploy and manage various types of applications, not just microservices, making it a more versatile and general-purpose solution. It provides powerful deployment mechanisms such as rolling updates, canary deployments, and automatic scaling based on resource utilization. Envoy, on the other hand, is specifically designed for microservices architectures and excels at handling east-west traffic between services within a network. It is often used as a sidecar proxy alongside application containers, adding an extra layer of functionality and control.
Configuration Language: Envoy has its own declarative configuration language called Configuration Discovery Service (CDS). It allows you to define the behavior of the proxy server and its interaction with other services using a JSON or YAML-based syntax. Kubernetes, on the other hand, uses YAML files to define the desired state of applications, including containers, volumes, and networking. YAML is more widely adopted and easier to work with for developers familiar with Kubernetes.
Service Discovery: Kubernetes includes a built-in service discovery and DNS system that automatically assigns and resolves IP addresses to services within the cluster. This enables easy and dynamic inter-service communication. Envoy also supports service discovery, but it provides additional features like intelligent load balancing and health checking. Envoy can integrate with various service discovery mechanisms, including Kubernetes' own service discovery, to provide enhanced capabilities.
Observability and Monitoring: Envoy offers powerful built-in observability features, including detailed logging, distributed tracing, and metrics collection. It integrates seamlessly with popular observability tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Jaeger. Kubernetes also provides monitoring capabilities through its built-in metrics server, but it may require additional tooling and configuration to achieve the same level of observability as Envoy.
Platform Maturity: Kubernetes is a mature platform with a large community and ecosystem. It has been widely adopted and is backed by major cloud providers, making it a reliable choice for production deployments. Envoy, although it has gained significant traction and popularity, is a relatively newer technology compared to Kubernetes. While it has a growing community and active development, it may not have the same level of maturity or industry support as Kubernetes.

Envoy vs Kubernetes

Overview

Envoy vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?