Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

Fleet

Stacks7

Followers39

Votes0

GitHub Stars2.4K

Forks301

Fleet vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

Fleet and Kubernetes are both container orchestration platforms that help manage and scale containerized applications. However, there are key differences between the two.

Architecture: Fleet is a distributed init system that manages systemd services across a cluster of machines, providing basic scheduling capabilities. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that manages the entire lifecycle of containers, from deployment to scaling and operations.
Scalability: Fleet is more suitable for smaller deployments and works well for managing a small fleet of machines. It lacks some advanced features like horizontal scaling and automatic load balancing. In contrast, Kubernetes is designed to handle large-scale deployments and provides features like horizontal and vertical scaling, auto-scaling based on resource utilization, and load balancing.
Service Discovery: Fleet relies on etcd for service discovery, which is a highly available key-value store. It allows service registration and service discovery using DNS or an HTTP API. Kubernetes, on the other hand, uses its own built-in service discovery mechanism called kube-dns. It automatically assigns DNS names to services and provides load balancing between service instances.
Fault Tolerance: Kubernetes is known for its high fault tolerance and self-healing capabilities. It can automatically detect and replace failed containers or nodes, ensuring high availability of applications. Fleet, on the other hand, lacks built-in fault tolerance mechanisms and requires external solutions for ensuring availability.
Container Networking: Kubernetes provides advanced networking capabilities through its Container Network Interface (CNI). It supports various networking plugins that allow different container pods to communicate with each other. Fleet, on the other hand, primarily relies on the underlying network infrastructure and does not provide extensive container networking features.
Ecosystem and Community: Kubernetes has a much larger and more active community compared to Fleet. It has a wide range of plugins, integrations, and tooling available, making it easier to extend and integrate with other systems. Fleet, on the other hand, has a smaller ecosystem and fewer community contributions, which may limit the availability of certain features and integration options.

In Summary, while Fleet is a lightweight cluster-level init system with basic scheduling capabilities, Kubernetes is a comprehensive container orchestration platform that provides advanced features like scalability, fault tolerance, service discovery, container networking, and has a larger ecosystem and community support.

Advice on Kubernetes, Fleet

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 (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.

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Comments

Anis

Founder at Odix

Nov 7, 2020

Review

I recommend this : -Spring reactive for back end : the fact it's reactive (async) it consumes half of the resources that a sync platform needs (so less CPU -> less money). -Angular : Web Front end ; it's gives you the possibility to use PWA which is a cheap replacement for a mobile app (but more less popular). -Docker images. -Kubernetes to orchestrate all the containers. -I Use Jenkins / blueocean, ansible for my CI/CD (with Github of course) -AWS of course : u can run a K8S cluster there, make it multi AZ (availability zones) to be highly available, use a load balancer and an auto scaler and ur good to go. -You can store data by taking any managed DB or u can deploy ur own (cheap but risky).

You pay less money, but u need some technical 2 - 3 guys to make that done.

Good luck

114k views114k

Comments

Michael

CEO at asencis Ltd

Jan 5, 2021

Needs advice

We develop rapidly with docker-compose orchestrated services, however, for production - we utilise the very best ideas that Kubernetes has to offer: SCALE! We can scale when needed, setting a maximum and minimum level of nodes for each application layer - scaling only when the load balancer needs it. This allowed us to reduce our devops costs by 40% whilst also maintaining an SLA of 99.87%.

272k views272k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	Fleet
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.	Fleet is a low-level cluster engine that feels like a distributed init system. With fleet, you can treat your CoreOS cluster as if it shared a single init system.
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	Deploy docker containers on arbitrary hosts in a cluster;Distribute services across a cluster using machine-level anti-affinity;Maintain N instances of a service, re-scheduling on machine failure;Discover machines running in the cluster;Automatically SSH into the machine running a job
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 2.4K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 301
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 7
Followers 52.8K	Followers 39
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, Fleet?

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.

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.

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.

Flocker

Flocker is a data volume manager and multi-host Docker cluster management tool. With it you can control your data using the same tools you use for your stateless applications. This means that you can run your databases, queues and key-value stores in Docker and move them around as easily as the rest of your app.