AWS App Mesh vs Kubernetes

Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

AWS App Mesh

Stacks23

Followers205

Votes0

AWS App Mesh vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between AWS App Mesh and Kubernetes

Introduction

Below are the key differences between AWS App Mesh and Kubernetes.

Service Architecture: AWS App Mesh is a service mesh that provides control over communication between services within an application, allowing for observability, traffic management, and security. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a container orchestration platform that manages the deployment, scaling, and operations of containers in a cluster.
Platform Support: AWS App Mesh is a platform-agnostic service mesh and can work with any container orchestration platform, including Kubernetes. It allows users to connect and manage services across different platforms seamlessly. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a specific platform for container orchestration and does not directly support other platforms.
Traffic Routing: AWS App Mesh offers advanced traffic routing capabilities, such as weighted routing, circuit breaking, and retries. It allows fine-grained control over how traffic is routed between services within an application. In Kubernetes, traffic routing is primarily handled through its built-in load balancing and service discovery mechanisms, which may not provide the same level of flexibility and control as AWS App Mesh.
Observability: AWS App Mesh provides built-in observability features like metrics, logs, and distributed tracing, which give developers insights into the behavior and performance of their applications. Kubernetes, on the other hand, does not offer these features out of the box. Observability in Kubernetes requires additional tools and configurations.
Security and Authorization: AWS App Mesh offers features like encryption, certificate management, and mutual TLS authentication to secure communication between services. It also supports fine-grained access control policies using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles. While Kubernetes provides some security features, such as authentication and authorization, it may require additional configuration to achieve the same level of security as AWS App Mesh.
Scalability and Autoscaling: AWS App Mesh offers automatic scaling of services based on custom metrics and thresholds. It can automatically scale services up or down based on demand. Kubernetes also supports autoscaling, but its capabilities may not be as advanced as those provided by AWS App Mesh.

In Summary, AWS App Mesh and Kubernetes differ in their service architecture, platform support, traffic routing capabilities, observability features, security and authorization mechanisms, and scalability/autoscaling capabilities.

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Advice on Kubernetes, AWS App Mesh

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

Decidedon

GitHub

GitHub Pages

Markdown

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.

12.8M views12.8M

Comments

Mohammed

CTO at Famcare

Jan 16, 2020

Needs advice

One of our applications is currently migrating to AWS, and we need to make a decision between using AWS API Gateway with AWS App Mesh, or Kong API Gateway with Kuma.

Some people advise us to benefit from AWS managed services, while others raise the vendor lock issue. So, I need your advice on that, and if there is any other important factor rather than vendor locking that I must take into consideration.

38.8k views38.8k

Comments

lyc218

Feb 21, 2020

Needs advice

Envoy proxy is widely adopted in many companies for service mesh proxy, but it utilizes BoringSSL by default. Red Hat OpenShift fork envoy branch with their own OpenSSL support, I wonder any other companies are also using envoy-openssl branch for compatibility? How about AWS App Mesh?

Any input would be much appreciated!

42.8k views42.8k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	AWS App Mesh
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.	AWS App Mesh is a service mesh based on the Envoy proxy that makes it easy to monitor and control containerized microservices. App Mesh standardizes how your microservices communicate, giving you end-to-end visibility and helping to ensure high-availability for your applications. App Mesh gives you consistent visibility and network traffic controls for every microservice in an application. You can use App Mesh with Amazon ECS (using the Amazon EC2 launch type), Amazon EKS, and Kubernetes on AWS.
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	-
Statistics
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 23
Followers 52.8K	Followers 205
Votes 685	Votes 0
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	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	Amazon EKS Amazon EC2 Envoy Amazon EC2 Container Service

What are some alternatives to Kubernetes, AWS App Mesh?

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.

Istio

Istio is an open platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. Istio's control plane provides an abstraction layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes, Mesos, etc.

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.

Azure Service Fabric

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud apps.

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.

Related Comparisons

AWS App Mesh vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between AWS App Mesh and Kubernetes

Introduction

Below are the key differences between AWS App Mesh and Kubernetes.

Service Architecture: AWS App Mesh is a service mesh that provides control over communication between services within an application, allowing for observability, traffic management, and security. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a container orchestration platform that manages the deployment, scaling, and operations of containers in a cluster.
Platform Support: AWS App Mesh is a platform-agnostic service mesh and can work with any container orchestration platform, including Kubernetes. It allows users to connect and manage services across different platforms seamlessly. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a specific platform for container orchestration and does not directly support other platforms.
Traffic Routing: AWS App Mesh offers advanced traffic routing capabilities, such as weighted routing, circuit breaking, and retries. It allows fine-grained control over how traffic is routed between services within an application. In Kubernetes, traffic routing is primarily handled through its built-in load balancing and service discovery mechanisms, which may not provide the same level of flexibility and control as AWS App Mesh.
Observability: AWS App Mesh provides built-in observability features like metrics, logs, and distributed tracing, which give developers insights into the behavior and performance of their applications. Kubernetes, on the other hand, does not offer these features out of the box. Observability in Kubernetes requires additional tools and configurations.
Security and Authorization: AWS App Mesh offers features like encryption, certificate management, and mutual TLS authentication to secure communication between services. It also supports fine-grained access control policies using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles. While Kubernetes provides some security features, such as authentication and authorization, it may require additional configuration to achieve the same level of security as AWS App Mesh.
Scalability and Autoscaling: AWS App Mesh offers automatic scaling of services based on custom metrics and thresholds. It can automatically scale services up or down based on demand. Kubernetes also supports autoscaling, but its capabilities may not be as advanced as those provided by AWS App Mesh.

AWS App Mesh vs Kubernetes

Overview

AWS App Mesh vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Key Differences Between AWS App Mesh and Kubernetes