Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Kubernetes vs Portainer: What are the differences?
What is Kubernetes? Manage a cluster of Linux containers as a single system to accelerate Dev and simplify Ops. 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.
What is Portainer? Simple management UI for Docker. Portainer is an open-source lightweight management UI which allows you to easily manage your Docker environments Portainer is available on Windows, Linux and Mac. It has never been so easy to manage Docker !.
Kubernetes and Portainer belong to "Container Tools" category of the tech stack.
Some of the features offered by Kubernetes are:
- 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
On the other hand, Portainer provides the following key features:
- Docker management
- Docker UI
- Docker cluster management
"Leading docker container management solution" is the primary reason why developers consider Kubernetes over the competitors, whereas "Simple" was stated as the key factor in picking Portainer.
Kubernetes is an open source tool with 54.2K GitHub stars and 18.8K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Kubernetes's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, Kubernetes has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1017 company stacks & 1060 developers stacks; compared to Portainer, which is listed in 23 company stacks and 17 developer stacks.
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%.
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.
Pros of Kubernetes
- Leading docker container management solution152
- Simple and powerful121
- Open source96
- Backed by google71
- The right abstractions55
- Scale services24
- Replication controller17
- Permission managment9
- Simple6
- Cheap5
- Supports autoscaling5
- Promotes modern/good infrascture practice3
- Reliable3
- No cloud platform lock-in3
- Self-healing3
- Open, powerful, stable3
- Scalable3
- Quick cloud setup2
- A self healing environment with rich metadata2
- Captain of Container Ship2
- Custom and extensibility1
- Expandable1
- Easy setup1
- Gke1
- Golang1
- Backed by Red Hat1
- Everything of CaaS1
- Runs on azure1
- Cloud Agnostic1
- Sfg1
Pros of Portainer
- Simple34
- Great UI25
- Friendly17
- Easy to setup, gives a practical interface for Docker12
- Fully featured11
- Because it just works, super simple yet powerful9
- A must for Docker DevOps8
- Free and opensource6
- It's simple, fast and the support is great4
- API4
- Template Support3
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Kubernetes
- Poor workflow for development13
- Steep learning curve10
- Orchestrates only infrastructure5
- High resource requirements for on-prem clusters2
Cons of Portainer
Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions
What is Kubernetes?
What is Portainer?
Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
What companies use Kubernetes?
What companies use Portainer?
Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions
What tools integrate with Kubernetes?
What tools integrate with Portainer?
Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions
Blog Posts
+9
+11
+11
+7
+12
+2
+14
Rafay Systems
+8