Overview

K9s

Stacks75

Followers103

Votes2

GitHub Stars31.7K

Forks2.0K

Flux CD

Stacks81

Followers76

Votes1

GitHub Stars6.9K

Forks1.1K

Flux CD vs K9s: What are the differences?

Introduction

Flux CD and K9s are both popular tools used in the Kubernetes ecosystem. Flux CD is a continuous delivery tool that automates the deployment of applications to Kubernetes clusters. On the other hand, K9s is a command-line interface (CLI) tool that provides a visual and intuitive way to interact with Kubernetes clusters.

Installation and Configuration: Flux CD requires a more complex setup compared to K9s. It involves installing and configuring the Flux daemon, along with setting up a Git repository for storing the cluster configuration. K9s, on the other hand, can be easily installed using a package manager and does not require additional configuration.
Usage and Functionality: Flux CD focuses on continuous delivery and automating the application deployment process. It integrates with GitOps methodologies and ensures that the cluster is always in sync with the desired state defined in the Git repository. K9s, on the other hand, provides a comprehensive CLI interface for interacting with Kubernetes clusters. It allows users to view and manage resources, monitor logs, and perform various operations on the cluster.
User Interface: Flux CD does not have a dedicated user interface and is primarily operated through the command line. It relies on Git repositories for managing the application configuration and deployment. K9s, on the other hand, provides a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows users to navigate and interact with the Kubernetes resources in a more intuitive manner. It provides a real-time view of the cluster state and allows for easy management of resources.
Cluster Management: Flux CD focuses on managing the deployment of applications to Kubernetes clusters and ensuring that the desired state is maintained. It provides features like automated releases, rollbacks, and reconciliation to keep the cluster in sync with the Git repository. K9s, on the other hand, provides a broader set of functionalities for managing all aspects of the Kubernetes cluster. It allows users to manage namespaces, nodes, pods, services, and other resources within the cluster.
Advanced Features: Flux CD offers advanced features like lifecycle hooks, which allow users to perform custom actions during the deployment process. It also integrates with external tools like Helm, allowing for advanced package management capabilities. K9s, on the other hand, provides features like real-time streaming of logs, interactive troubleshooting, and resource filtering, which make it easier to monitor and debug applications running in the cluster.
Community and Ecosystem: Flux CD has a strong community and is widely adopted for continuous delivery in Kubernetes environments. It has integrations with popular Git hosting providers and is actively maintained by the CNCF. K9s, on the other hand, has a smaller but active user community and is known for its ease of use and intuitive interface.

In summary, Flux CD is a powerful tool for automating the deployment of applications to Kubernetes clusters, focusing on continuous delivery and GitOps methodologies. K9s, on the other hand, provides a user-friendly CLI with a graphical interface for managing Kubernetes clusters and resources efficiently.

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Detailed Comparison

K9s	Flux CD
K9s provides a curses based terminal UI to interact with your Kubernetes clusters. The aim of this project is to make it easier to navigate, observe and manage your applications in the wild. K9s continually watches Kubernetes for changes and offers subsequent commands to interact with observed resources.	It is a tool that automatically ensures that the state of your Kubernetes cluster matches the configuration you’ve supplied in Git. It uses an operator in the cluster to trigger deployments inside Kubernetes, which means that you don’t need a separate continuous delivery tool.
-	Describe the entire desired state of your system in Git. This includes apps, configuration, dashboards, monitoring, and everything else; Use YAML to enforce conformance to the declared system. You don’t need to run kubectl because all changes go through Git. Use diffing tools to detect divergence between observed and desired state and receive notifications; Everything is controlled through pull requests, which means no learning curve for new developers. Just use your standard PR process. Your Git history provides a sequence of transactions, allowing you to recover system state from any snapshot. Fix a production issue via pull request rather than making changes to the running system
Statistics
GitHub Stars 31.7K	GitHub Stars 6.9K
GitHub Forks 2.0K	GitHub Forks 1.1K
Stacks 75	Stacks 81
Followers 103	Followers 76
Votes 2	Votes 1
Pros & Cons
Pros 2 Nice UI and fast way to manage my kubernetes clusters	Pros 1 Open Source
Integrations
Kubernetes	Git Kubernetes YAML

What are some alternatives to K9s, Flux CD?

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.

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.