Container orchestration is an ever-changing technology. Three industry giants are currently in use; Kubernetes (Kubernetes), Docker Swarm and Apache Mesos. Container Orchestration Engines are DevOps Infrastructure Management Tools. Docker Swarm is the containerization tool of choice for many customers. Kubernetes Mesos is the main competitor. They offer a variety of usability gradients, with many evolving features. They provide differing gradients of usability, with many evolving features.
Despite the popularity of Docker Swarm, it has some drawbacks and limited functionalities:
Docker Swarm is platform-dependent.
- Docker Swarm does not provide efficient storage options.
- Docker Swarm has limited fault tolerance.
- Docker Swarm has inadequate monitoring.
- These drawbacks provoke businesses to question: ‘How to choose the right container management and orchestration tool?’ Many companies are now choosing an alternative to Docker Swarm. Kubernetes, and Mesos are the two main alternatives to Docker Swarm. So, one can come to an independently informed conclusion. So, one can come to an independently informed conclusion.
Characteristics of Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and Mesos
Characteristics
| Docker Swarm | Kubernetes | Mesos/Marathon | Initial Release Date |
| Mar 2013, Stable release July 2019 | July 2015, v1.16 in Sept 2019 | July 2016, Stable release August 2019 | Deployment |
| YAML based | YAML based | Unique format | Stability |
| Comparatively new and constantly evolving | Quite mature and stable with continuous updates | Mature | Design Philosophy |
| Docker-based | Pod-based resource-groupings | Cgroups and control groups based in Linux | Images Supported |
| Docker-image format | Supports Docker and rkt, limitedly | Supports mostly Docker | Learning Curve |
| Easy | Steep | Steep | What is Kubernetes? |
First released in June of 2014, Kubernetes, was also known as k8s. Google has developed a container-based orchestration platform for Cloud native computing. Kubernetes has some of the best features available. Kubernetes has a huge community backing it. Google uses Kubernetes to power its Container as a Service, now called the Google Container Engine. Microsoft Azure and Red Hat OpenShift are two other platforms that support Kubernetes. It also supports Docker and uses a YAML based deployment model.
Constructed on a modular API core, the architecture of Kubernetes allows vendors to integrate systems around its proprietary technology. It does a great job of empowering application developers with a powerful tool for Docker container orchestration and open-source projects.
What is Apache Mesos?
Apache Mesos’ roots go back to 2009 when Ph.D. students first developed it at UC Berkley. It takes a more distributed approach to managing cloud and datacenter resources when compared to Kubernetes. Users can choose the type and scale of applications they want to run. Mesos is a container management framework that allows for other frameworks to be run on top. This includes Kubernetes, Apache Aurora, Mesosphere Marathon, and Chronos.
Mesos was created to solve many different challenges. The first was to abstract all data center resources and combine them into one pool. One way is to combine diverse workloads, and automate operations for day two. It can manage a diverse set of workloads individually, including application groups such as Java, stateless micro-services, etc. It has a unique ability to manage a diverse set of workloads individually, including application groups such as Java, stateless micro-services, etc.
Container Management: Explained
Before we decide on how to choose a container management tool, the concept of Container Management must be explained further.
Container Management is the process of adding, organizing, and replacing large numbers of software containers. It uses software to automatically create, deploy, and scale containers. Container management requires a platform to organize software containers, known as operated-system-level virtualizations. This platform optimizes the efficiency and streamlines container delivery without the use of complex interdependent system architectures.
Containers have become quite popular, as more enterprises are using DevOps for quicker development and for its applications. Container orchestration is a specialized tool that can be used to manage containers. It automates deployment, management, networking scaling, and availability of container-based applications.
Container Orchestration: Explained
Container Orchestration refers to the automatic process of managing or scheduling of individual containers used for microservices-based applications within multiple clusters. It is compatible with Kubernetes as well as Mesos. It also schedules the deployment of containers into the clusters, determining the best host for the container.
Some of the reasons why a container orchestration framework is required include;
- Configuring and scheduling containers
- Container Availability
- Container Provisioning and Deployment
- Container Configuration
- Scaling applications of containers for load balancing
- Health monitoring of containers
- Securing interactions between containers
- How to Select Container management and orchestration tool?
- There are many variables to consider when deciding on how to implement container management and orchestration efficiently. The user’s specific needs will determine the final choice. This is to avoid developers having to spend time on special-purpose codes for finding dependencies. This is to avoid developers having to spend time on special-purpose codes for finding dependencies.
Simplicity: The tool in use should be as simple to implement as possible.
Active Development: The tool chosen should have a development team that provides users with regular updates. This is due to the ever-evolving nature of container orchestration.
- Cloud Vendor: The tool chosen should not be tied to any single cloud provider.
- Note: Container orchestration is just one example of a workload that the Mesos Modular Architecture can run.
- is the name of this specialized orchestration frame work. It was originally developed to orchestrate app archives in Linux cgroup containers, later extended support to Docker containers in 2014.
- What are the differences between Kubernetes and Mesos?
Kubernetes and Mesos have different approaches to the same problem. Kubernetes is a container-based orchestrator and Apache Mesos is a cloud-based operating system. Therefore, there are several fundamental differences between the two, which are highlighted in the table below.MarathonPoints of Difference
Kubernetes
Apache Mesos
| Application Definition | Kubernetes is a combination of Replica Sets, Replication Controllers, Pods, along with certain Services and Deployments. Here, “Pod” refers to a group of co-located containers, which is considered as the atomic unit of deployment. | The Mesos’ Application Group is modeled as an n-ary tree, with groups as branches and applications as leaves. It’s used to partition multiple applications into manageable sets, where components are deployed in order of dependency. |
| Availability | Pods are distributed among Worker Nodes. | Applications are distributed among Slave nodes. |
| Load Balancing | Pods are exposed via a service that acts as a load balancer. | Applications can be reached through an acting load balancer, which is the Mesos-DNS. |
| Storage | There are two Stage APIs. There are two Stage APIs. The first provides abstractions of individual storage backends, such as NFS and AWS. The second provides abstractions of a storage request. The different storage backends can be used to fulfill this requirement. The container must always run on that node. The experimental flocker integration is responsible for supporting persistent volumes that are not local to one single node. | Networking Model |
| Kubernetes’ Networking model allows any pod to communicate with any service or with other pods. Two separate networks are required to run, and neither requires connectivity outside of the cluster. This is accomplished by deploying an overlay network on the cluster nodes. | Marathon’s Docker integration allows mapping container ports to hose ports, which are a limited resource. Calico integration is required to automatically assign an IP address to the container. It should be noted that multiple containers cannot share the same network namespace. | Purpose of Use |
| It is ideal for newcomers to the clustering world, providing a quick, easy, and light way to start begin their journey in cluster-oriented development. It is supported by some big names like IBM and Microsoft. Mesos allows users to interleave existing workloads, such as Hadoop and Kafka. It is a much more stable platform while being comparatively complex to use. | Vendors and Developers | Kubernetes is used by several companies and developers and is supported by a few other platforms such as Red Hat OpenShift and Microsoft Azure. |
| Mesos is supported by large organizations such as Twitter, Apple, and Yelp. Its learning curve is steep and quite complex as its core focus is one Big Data and analytics. | Note: | If you want to simplify configuring Kubernetes network connectivity, one of the options is Calico. Learn more by referring to our article How to Run Kubernetes with Calico. |
| Conclusion | Kubernetes and Mesos employ different tactics to tackle the same problem. We found that, when comparing the two solutions based on their features and advantages, they are equal. Both tools are effective at managing docker containers. They both provide access to container orchestration for the portability and scalability of applications. | The intuitive architectural design of Mesos provides good options when it comes to handling legacy systems and large-scale clustered environments via its DC/OS. It can also handle more specific technologies, such as Hadoop distributed processing. Kubernetes is preferred more by development teams who want to build a system dedicated exclusively to docker container orchestration. |
Our straightforward comparison should provide users with a clear picture of Kubernetes vs Mesos and their core competencies. Our goal was to give the reader relevant data and facts that would help them make a decision. If you’d like to find out more about which solution would suit you best, contact us today for a free consultation.
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