Apache Mesos vs Mesosphere: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Apache Mesos and Mesosphere are both software platforms that are used for managing and coordinating the resources in a data center or cloud environment. While they have some similarities, there are key differences between the two.

1. Architecture: Apache Mesos is a distributed system kernel that provides efficient resource isolation and sharing across multiple applications. It acts as a layer between the hardware and the applications, providing a unified interface for managing and scheduling resources. Mesosphere, on the other hand, is a platform built on top of Apache Mesos that provides additional tools and services for managing and deploying applications in a distributed environment.

2. Scalability: Apache Mesos is highly scalable and can handle thousands of nodes and tasks in a cluster. It is designed to be fault-tolerant and can maintain high availability even in the face of failures. Mesosphere, with its additional tools and services, provides enhanced scalability features and allows for the management of large-scale clusters with ease.

3. Application Frameworks: Apache Mesos provides a framework for building and running distributed applications, but it does not offer built-in support for higher-level application frameworks. Mesosphere, on the other hand, comes with a number of application frameworks pre-integrated, such as Apache Hadoop, Apache Spark, and Apache Kafka. This makes it easier to deploy and manage these frameworks on top of Mesos.

4. Enterprise Features: Mesosphere is designed with enterprise features in mind. It provides a number of tools and services for managing and deploying applications in a production environment, such as service discovery, load balancing, and monitoring. These features are not available out-of-the-box with Apache Mesos.

5. Commercial Support: Mesosphere offers commercial support for its platform, including training, consulting, and 24/7 technical support. Apache Mesos, being an open-source project, relies more on community support and does not provide the same level of commercial support as Mesosphere.

6. Ease of Use: Mesosphere provides a user-friendly web-based interface for managing and monitoring applications running on Mesos clusters. It also offers a command-line interface and APIs for programmatically interacting with the platform. Apache Mesos, while powerful, requires more technical expertise to set up and manage.

In summary, Apache Mesos provides the core distributed systems capabilities for resource management and scheduling, while Mesosphere builds on top of it to provide additional tools and services for managing and deploying applications. Mesosphere also offers enterprise features, commercial support, and a more user-friendly interface compared to Apache Mesos.