Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

Nomad

Stacks256

Followers344

Votes32

GitHub Stars15.9K

Forks2.0K

Kubernetes vs Nomad: What are the differences?

Introduction

Kubernetes and Nomad are both container orchestration platforms that help manage and deploy applications in a distributed environment. While they share some similarities, there are key differences between the two.

Architecture: Kubernetes follows a master-worker architecture, where there is a central master node that manages the deployment and scaling of containers across worker nodes. In contrast, Nomad adopts a server-client architecture, where both the server and client nodes can perform scheduling and orchestration tasks. This architecture flexibility allows for easier scaling and resource allocation in Nomad.
Scalability: Kubernetes is known to handle larger-scale deployments, supporting thousands of nodes and tens of thousands of containers. It provides more advanced scaling features like horizontal pod autoscaling, allowing applications to automatically scale based on demand. On the other hand, Nomad is designed to be lightweight and optimized for smaller-scale deployments, making it easier to run on resource-constrained environments such as edge devices or small clusters.
Ease of Use: Kubernetes has a steeper learning curve compared to Nomad. It offers a rich set of features and configurations, which can be overwhelming for beginners. Nomad, on the other hand, prioritizes simplicity and ease of use. It provides a simpler interface and requires less configuration, making it more accessible for developers who want to quickly get started with container orchestration.
Community and Ecosystem: Kubernetes has a larger and more mature community and ecosystem compared to Nomad. It has a wide range of tools, plugins, and documentation available, making it easier to find resources and get support. Nomad, although growing, has a smaller community, resulting in a more limited selection of tools and plugins. This can impact the availability of integrations and add-ons for specific use cases.
Service Discovery and Networking: Kubernetes has built-in service discovery and networking capabilities through its DNS-based service discovery and networking model. It automatically assigns unique network addresses to services and provides load balancing between them. Nomad, on the other hand, does not provide native service discovery and networking features. It relies on external tools for addressing and load balancing, which allows for more flexibility and choice but requires additional setup and configuration.
Use Cases: Kubernetes is well-suited for complex, large-scale deployments in production environments. It provides extensive features for managing stateful applications, service mesh deployments, and multi-cloud setups. Nomad, on the other hand, is a good choice for simpler deployments or when resource efficiency and lightweightness are prioritized. It is often used for edge computing, development environments, or scenarios where simplicity and ease of use are important.

In Summary, Kubernetes and Nomad differ in their architecture, scalability, ease of use, community/ecosystem support, service discovery/networking capabilities, and use cases. Kubernetes is more suitable for large-scale, complex deployments, while Nomad is focused on simplicity, resource efficiency, and smaller-scale setups.

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Advice on Kubernetes, Nomad

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

Nilesh

CTO at Aislelabs

Nov 15, 2020

Decided

We collect and process trillions of data points per year, providing a suite of products for analytics and marketing to enterprise customers. As part of our journey to a cloud-native architecture, the Aislelabs engineering team adopted Hashicorp Stack including Nomad as the workload orchestration software after considering a number of solutions, including vanilla Kubernetes, Rancher, DC/OS, Mesos, Docker Swarm, and others.

Nomad provides everything needed to orchestrate all common use scenarios and is a great choice for the majority of teams. It’s great for even the smallest of the teams to mid-sized companies for what they need. Read details at https://www.aislelabs.com/blog/2020/10/26/hashicorp-nomad-workload-orchestration-at-aislelabs/

12k views12k

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

115k views115k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	Nomad
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.	Nomad is a cluster manager, designed for both long lived services and short lived batch processing workloads. Developers use a declarative job specification to submit work, and Nomad ensures constraints are satisfied and resource utilization is optimized by efficient task packing. Nomad supports all major operating systems and virtualized, containerized, or standalone applications.
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	Handles the scheduling and upgrading of the applications over time; With built-in dry-run execution, Nomad shows what scheduling decisions it will take before it takes them. Operators can approve or deny these changes to create a safe and reproducible workflow; Nomad runs applications and ensures they keep running in failure scenarios. In addition to long-running services, Nomad can schedule batch jobs, distributed cron jobs, and parameterized jobs; Stream logs, send signals, and interact with the file system of scheduled applications. These operator-friendly commands bring the familiar debugging tools to a scheduled world
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 15.9K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 2.0K
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 256
Followers 52.8K	Followers 344
Votes 685	Votes 32
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 7 Built in Consul integration 6 Easy setup 4 Bult-in Vault integration 3 Built-in federation support 2 Autoscaling support Cons 3 Easy to start with 1 Small comunity 1 HCL language for configuration, an unpopular DSL
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	Consul Docker Vault

What are some alternatives to Kubernetes, Nomad?

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.

Apache Mesos

Apache Mesos is a cluster manager that simplifies the complexity of running applications on a shared pool of servers.

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.