Container cluster: Kubernetes or Docker Swarm?

[s_vetter]

In the last months I got to know some people that are still talking about this decision and why you should use Kubernetes or Docker Swarm for your container infrastructure cluster. In my opinion it matters on what you are doing, but find your decision yourself and count the numbers that are behind the answers:

1. Do you need performance proven by a company like Google [1] or is it enough for you that you can administrate 1.000 hosts and 30.000 containers [0]?


2. Do you want a community driven software supported by RedHat, Microsoft, IBM, Google and others [1] or do you like it better that one company decides what you will get in the future [0]?


3. Cluster setups need failover and/or loadbalancing. An integrated solution that can even autoscale would be my choice [1] or a solution where I need to build up cluster features myself with additional software is my choice [0]?


4. I want a solution where a lot of developers are working on to fix issues and create new features [1] or I want less developers to work on fixing issues and implementing new features [0]?


5. I like to search my containers that build my applications - guess you have 100 applications and each of them consists of 3 containers, then you have to search 3 containers in 300 [0] or I want to see directly all my applications and look at the containers of the applications [1]?


6. Increasing the instances of a container should be easy and connected to a configuration I can change where I have control over how many instances of a container I have running [1] or Increasing instances needs me to update cluster configurations in an additional service plus spinning up an additional container (or more) [0]?

Well, I guess you already know what you get out of it, but there are even more things that are going on and that you might also want to take into your decision. If you like to get to know more, just contact me. If this is already enough for you, count your score: zero to three means you want to use Docker Swarm, else you want to use Kubernetes.

If you want to have some tips and maybe also want to know why in general you should jump on the train and use container technology, I will help you to find out why you want or why you don't want to do that.