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Writer's pictureRex Andrew

Kubernetes vs Docker Swarm

Kubernetes and Docker Swarm have many of the same features, but each tool shines in different aspects.


Features

Kubernetes

Docker Swarm

Installation & Cluster Config

Setup is very complicated, but once installed cluster is robust.

Installation is very simple, but the cluster is not robust

Learning curve

High learning curve (but has more features)

Lightweight and easy to use (but limited functionality)

GUI

Detailed native dashboards

No out-of-the-box dashboards (but you can integrate a third-party tool)

Cluster setup

Difficult to start a cluster (but the cluster is very strong once set up)

Easy to start a cluster

Availability features

Self-healing, intelligent scheduling, and replication features

Availability controls and service duplication

Scalability

All-in-one scaling based on traffic

Values scaling quickly (approx. 5x faster than K8s) over scaling automatically

Horizontal auto-scaling

Kubernetes can do auto-scaling.

Docker swarm cannot do auto-scaling.

Monitoring capabilities

Has built-in monitoring and logging

Basic server log and event tools, but needs a third-party tool for advanced monitoring

Load balancing

Manual intervention needed for load balancing traffic between different containers and pods

Docker swarm does auto load balancing of traffic between containers in the cluster.

Rolling Updates & Rollbacks

Can deploy rolling updates and does automatic rollbacks

Can deploy rolling updates, but not automatic rollback.

DATA Volumes

Can share storage volumes only with the other containers in the same pod.

Can share storage volumes with any other container.

Security features

Relies on transport layer security (TLS) and access control-related tasks

Supports multiple security protocols (RBAC authorization, TLS/SSL, secrets management, policies, etc.)

CLI

Needs a separate CLI

Integrated Docker CLI, which can limit the functionality in some use cases

Optimal use case

High-demand apps with a complex configuration

Simple apps that are quick to deploy and easy to manage


Kubernetes Cheat Sheet

This page contains a list of commonly used kubectl commands and flags. Kubectl apply - Creating objects # create resource(s) kubectl...

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