Fleet vs Rancher

Overview

Rancher

Stacks952

Followers1.5K

Votes644

Fleet

Stacks13

Followers39

Votes0

GitHub Stars2.4K

Forks301

Fleet vs Rancher: What are the differences?

Fleet and Rancher are both container management platforms that assist in deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications. Let's explore the key differences between Fleet and Rancher:

Architecture and Deployment: Fleet is a lightweight container orchestration platform that leverages Kubernetes as its underlying container orchestrator. It is designed for minimalism and simplicity. In contrast, Rancher is a more comprehensive container management platform that supports multiple container orchestrators, including Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Apache Mesos. It provides a unified management interface for multiple clusters, making it ideal for organizations with diverse container orchestration needs or those looking for a platform-agnostic solution.
Focus and Target Audience: Fleet is primarily focused on simplicity, efficiency, and ease of use, making it well-suited for individual developers, small teams, or organizations with straightforward container deployment requirements. On the other hand, Rancher is targeted at larger enterprises and organizations with complex container environments and multi-cloud deployments. It provides robust features for managing large-scale container deployments and offers advanced capabilities like RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), monitoring, and centralized logging.
Ecosystem and Integration: Rancher offers a rich ecosystem and extensive integration capabilities. It provides a wide range of built-in tools and services, such as Helm charts, Istio, Prometheus, and Grafana, enabling users to easily adopt and integrate additional components into their containerized applications. This extensive integration support allows organizations to build complex and feature-rich applications with ease. Fleet, while leveraging Kubernetes' vast ecosystem, does not offer the same level of built-in integrations and extensibility options as Rancher.
Community and Support: Rancher benefits from a strong and active community, providing a wealth of resources, documentation, and community-driven solutions. This vibrant community support contributes to a wealth of knowledge and experience that can be beneficial for organizations adopting Rancher as their container management platform. Fleet, being a newer and more specialized platform, may have a smaller community and support ecosystem.
Complexity and Learning Curve: As a lightweight and minimalist platform, Fleet generally has a lower learning curve, making it easier for developers and small teams to get started quickly. Rancher, due to its broader scope and support for multiple orchestrators, may have a higher initial learning curve. However, its comprehensive features and capabilities provide greater flexibility and scalability for organizations with complex container management requirements.

In summary, Fleet's simplicity and lightweight nature make it suitable for smaller-scale deployments and individual developers, while Rancher's comprehensive features and multi-orchestrator support cater to larger enterprises and organizations with diverse container environments.

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Detailed Comparison

Rancher	Fleet
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.	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.
Manage Hosts, Deploy Containers, Monitor Resources;User Management & Collaboration;Native Docker APIs & Tools;Monitoring and Logging;Connect Containers, Manage Disks, Deploy Load Balancers;Docker App Catalog; Included Kubernetes Distribution;Included Docker Swarm Distribution; Included Mesos Distribution;Infrastructure Management	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 952	Stacks 13
Followers 1.5K	Followers 39
Votes 644	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 103 Easy to use 79 Open source and totally free 63 Multi-host docker-compose support 58 Load balancing and health check included 58 Simple Cons 10 Hosting Rancher can be complicated	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Jenkins Datadog Google Compute Engine Docker Compose Amazon EC2 DigitalOcean GitHub Docker Kubernetes Drone.io	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Rancher, Fleet?

Kubernetes

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.

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.

Kitematic

Simple Docker App management for Mac OS X

Related Comparisons

Architecture and Deployment: Fleet is a lightweight container orchestration platform that leverages Kubernetes as its underlying container orchestrator. It is designed for minimalism and simplicity. In contrast, Rancher is a more comprehensive container management platform that supports multiple container orchestrators, including Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, and Apache Mesos. It provides a unified management interface for multiple clusters, making it ideal for organizations with diverse container orchestration needs or those looking for a platform-agnostic solution.
Focus and Target Audience: Fleet is primarily focused on simplicity, efficiency, and ease of use, making it well-suited for individual developers, small teams, or organizations with straightforward container deployment requirements. On the other hand, Rancher is targeted at larger enterprises and organizations with complex container environments and multi-cloud deployments. It provides robust features for managing large-scale container deployments and offers advanced capabilities like RBAC (Role-Based Access Control), monitoring, and centralized logging.
Ecosystem and Integration: Rancher offers a rich ecosystem and extensive integration capabilities. It provides a wide range of built-in tools and services, such as Helm charts, Istio, Prometheus, and Grafana, enabling users to easily adopt and integrate additional components into their containerized applications. This extensive integration support allows organizations to build complex and feature-rich applications with ease. Fleet, while leveraging Kubernetes' vast ecosystem, does not offer the same level of built-in integrations and extensibility options as Rancher.
Community and Support: Rancher benefits from a strong and active community, providing a wealth of resources, documentation, and community-driven solutions. This vibrant community support contributes to a wealth of knowledge and experience that can be beneficial for organizations adopting Rancher as their container management platform. Fleet, being a newer and more specialized platform, may have a smaller community and support ecosystem.
Complexity and Learning Curve: As a lightweight and minimalist platform, Fleet generally has a lower learning curve, making it easier for developers and small teams to get started quickly. Rancher, due to its broader scope and support for multiple orchestrators, may have a higher initial learning curve. However, its comprehensive features and capabilities provide greater flexibility and scalability for organizations with complex container management requirements.

Fleet vs Rancher