Appium vs Kubernetes

Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

Appium

Stacks650

Followers574

Votes28

GitHub Stars20.8K

Forks6.2K

Appium vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between Appium and Kubernetes

Introduction

Appium and Kubernetes are both popular technologies used in the field of software development and deployment. While Appium is primarily focused on mobile app testing, Kubernetes is a powerful container orchestration tool designed for managing containerized applications. In this article, we will explore the key differences between Appium and Kubernetes.

Architecture: Appium follows a client-server architecture where the client interacts with the Appium server to automate mobile apps. On the other hand, Kubernetes follows a master-worker architecture, where the master node manages the cluster by coordinating and distributing workloads among worker nodes.
Purpose: Appium is primarily used for mobile app testing, allowing testers to write automated tests using various programming languages and execute them on real devices or emulators. Conversely, Kubernetes is designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across a cluster of machines.
Target Audience: Appium is mostly used by mobile app developers and testers who aim to automate their testing processes for mobile applications. In contrast, Kubernetes is aimed at DevOps teams and infrastructure engineers responsible for managing and scaling containerized applications in production environments.
Level of Abstraction: Appium operates at a higher level of abstraction, providing various options for interacting with mobile applications, such as UI automation and even integration with testing frameworks. Kubernetes operates at a lower level, managing containers and their lifecycles, but without direct knowledge or control over the internals of the applications inside those containers.
Scope: Appium focuses exclusively on mobile app automation and does not cover other aspects of managing the underlying infrastructure or scaling applications. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a comprehensive container orchestration platform that handles various operational aspects like scaling, load balancing, and self-healing of applications.
Integration with Cloud Providers: Appium provides integrations with various cloud-based testing platforms, allowing users to run tests on real devices in the cloud. Kubernetes, on the other hand, works seamlessly with multiple cloud providers and can easily deploy and manage containerized applications on cloud infrastructure.

In summary, Appium is a mobile app testing framework that operates at a higher level of abstraction, while Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform aimed at managing containerized applications across a cluster of machines.

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Advice on Kubernetes, Appium

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

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Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

@{GitHub}|tool:27| (incl. @{GitHub Pages}|tool:683|/@{Markdown}|tool:1147| for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
Respectively @{Git}|tool:1046| as revision control system
@{SourceTree}|tool:1599| as @{Git}|tool:1046| GUI
@{Visual Studio Code}|tool:4202| as IDE
@{CircleCI}|tool:190| for continuous integration (automatize development process)
@{Prettier}|tool:7035| / @{TSLint}|tool:5561| / @{ESLint}|tool:3337| as code linter
@{SonarQube}|tool:2638| as quality gate
@{Docker}|tool:586| as container management (incl. @{Docker Compose}|tool:3136| for multi-container application management)
@{VirtualBox}|tool:774| for operating system simulation tests
@{Kubernetes}|tool:1885| as cluster management for docker containers
@{Heroku}|tool:133| for deploying in test environments
@{nginx}|tool:1052| as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
@{SSLMate}|tool:2752| (using @{OpenSSL}|tool:3091|) for certificate management
@{Amazon EC2}|tool:18| (incl. @{Amazon S3}|tool:25|) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
@{PostgreSQL}|tool:1028| as preferred database system
@{Redis}|tool:1031| 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.

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Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	Appium
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.	Appium is an open source test automation framework for use with native, hybrid, and mobile web apps. It drives iOS and Android apps using the WebDriver protocol. Appium is sponsored by Sauce Labs and a thriving community of open source developers.
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	Works on native and hybrid mobile apps; Write mobile tests using any language or framework; Open source; Facilitates mobile continuous integration; Mobile test automation tool; Cross-platform (iOS, Android); Framework based on Selenium
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 20.8K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 6.2K
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 650
Followers 52.8K	Followers 574
Votes 685	Votes 28
Pros & Cons
Pros 166 Leading docker container management solution 130 Simple and powerful 108 Open source 76 Backed by google 58 The right abstractions Cons 16 Steep learning curve 15 Poor workflow for development 8 Orchestrates only infrastructure 4 High resource requirements for on-prem clusters 2 Too heavy for simple systems	Pros 12 Webdriverio support 6 Java, C#, Python support 3 Open source 2 Active community 2 Great GUI with inspector
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	Sauce Labs

What are some alternatives to Kubernetes, Appium?

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Portainer

It is a universal container management tool. It works with Kubernetes, Docker, Docker Swarm and Azure ACI. It allows you to manage containers without needing to know platform-specific code.

Codefresh

Automate and parallelize testing. Codefresh allows teams to spin up on-demand compositions to run unit and integration tests as part of the continuous integration process. Jenkins integration allows more complex pipelines.

CAST.AI

It is an AI-driven cloud optimization platform for Kubernetes. Instantly cut your cloud bill, prevent downtime, and 10X the power of DevOps.

k3s

Certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Supports something as small as a Raspberry Pi or as large as an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server.

Flocker

Flocker is a data volume manager and multi-host Docker cluster management tool. With it you can control your data using the same tools you use for your stateless applications. This means that you can run your databases, queues and key-value stores in Docker and move them around as easily as the rest of your app.

Kitematic

Simple Docker App management for Mac OS X

Related Comparisons

Appium vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between Appium and Kubernetes

Introduction

Architecture: Appium follows a client-server architecture where the client interacts with the Appium server to automate mobile apps. On the other hand, Kubernetes follows a master-worker architecture, where the master node manages the cluster by coordinating and distributing workloads among worker nodes.
Purpose: Appium is primarily used for mobile app testing, allowing testers to write automated tests using various programming languages and execute them on real devices or emulators. Conversely, Kubernetes is designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across a cluster of machines.
Target Audience: Appium is mostly used by mobile app developers and testers who aim to automate their testing processes for mobile applications. In contrast, Kubernetes is aimed at DevOps teams and infrastructure engineers responsible for managing and scaling containerized applications in production environments.
Level of Abstraction: Appium operates at a higher level of abstraction, providing various options for interacting with mobile applications, such as UI automation and even integration with testing frameworks. Kubernetes operates at a lower level, managing containers and their lifecycles, but without direct knowledge or control over the internals of the applications inside those containers.
Scope: Appium focuses exclusively on mobile app automation and does not cover other aspects of managing the underlying infrastructure or scaling applications. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a comprehensive container orchestration platform that handles various operational aspects like scaling, load balancing, and self-healing of applications.
Integration with Cloud Providers: Appium provides integrations with various cloud-based testing platforms, allowing users to run tests on real devices in the cloud. Kubernetes, on the other hand, works seamlessly with multiple cloud providers and can easily deploy and manage containerized applications on cloud infrastructure.

Appium vs Kubernetes

Overview

Appium vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?