Knative vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Knative and Kubernetes

Knative and Kubernetes are both popular open-source platforms used for managing containerized applications and services. While they share some similarities, there are key differences between the two platforms that set them apart.

1. Abstraction Level: Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that provides a robust infrastructure for managing and scaling containerized applications. It focuses on providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure layer for containers, allowing developers to deploy, manage, and scale applications. On the other hand, Knative is built on top of Kubernetes and adds a higher-level abstraction specifically for serverless workloads. Knative abstracts away the infrastructure concerns and provides developers with a serverless experience, enabling them to focus solely on writing code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

2. Serverless Support: One of the key differences between Knative and Kubernetes is their support for serverless computing. While Kubernetes can run serverless workloads using custom configurations or external tools like Kubeless or OpenFaaS, Knative is specifically designed for serverless applications. Knative provides a set of building blocks for event-driven, auto-scaling, and managed container workloads, making it easier to develop, deploy, and manage serverless applications.

3. Auto-scaling and Event-driven Scaling: Knative offers built-in auto-scaling capabilities for serverless workloads. It can automatically scale up or down based on the incoming traffic or events. This makes Knative well-suited for handling variable workloads and bursty traffic patterns. In contrast, while Kubernetes also has auto-scaling capabilities, it requires additional setup and configuration to achieve the same level of auto-scaling and event-driven scaling as offered by Knative.

4. Workload Abstraction and Portability: Kubernetes provides a generic platform for managing containerized workloads and has a highly flexible and extensible architecture. It allows running various types of workloads, including stateful and stateless applications and provides a wide range of options for customization and portability. Knative, on the other hand, focuses specifically on serverless workloads and provides a higher-level abstraction for building serverless applications. While Knative uses Kubernetes under the hood, its abstraction is more tailored towards serverless use cases and provides additional abstractions and APIs specifically for serverless development.

5. Ease of Use and Developer Experience: Kubernetes can have a steep learning curve, especially for developers new to container orchestration. It requires understanding various concepts, such as pods, services, deployments, and networking, to effectively deploy and manage applications. Knative, being a higher-level abstraction built on top of Kubernetes, provides a simpler and more intuitive developer experience for serverless workloads. It offers a higher-level API and abstracts away most of the infrastructure concerns, allowing developers to focus more on writing code and less on managing infrastructure.

6. Community and Maturity: Kubernetes has been around for a longer time and has a larger community and ecosystem compared to Knative. It has become the de facto standard for container orchestration and has widespread adoption in the industry. Knative, being a relatively newer project, has a smaller but growing community. While it is gaining popularity, it may not have the same breadth of community-contributed tools and integrations as Kubernetes.

In summary, Knative provides a higher-level abstraction for serverless workloads on top of Kubernetes, offering built-in serverless support, auto-scaling capabilities, simplified developer experience, and tailored abstractions for serverless development. Kubernetes, on the other hand, provides a more generic platform for managing containerized workloads with a larger community and ecosystem.