Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes

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Azure Service Fabric

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Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes are both popular container orchestration platforms that offer a range of features and capabilities. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between the two platforms.

  1. Infrastructure setup: Azure Service Fabric is a platform that abstracts away the underlying infrastructure, allowing developers to focus on building applications. On the other hand, Kubernetes is an open-source platform that can be deployed on any infrastructure, giving users more control over their infrastructure setup.

  2. Deployment and scaling: Azure Service Fabric provides built-in support for microservices, making it easy to deploy and scale applications composed of multiple services. In contrast, Kubernetes focuses on managing containers and offers more flexibility in terms of containerization, allowing users to deploy and scale containerized applications.

  3. Service discovery and load balancing: Azure Service Fabric includes built-in service discovery and load balancing features, making it easier for applications to discover and communicate with other services in the cluster. Kubernetes relies on external tools and services for service discovery and load balancing, offering more flexibility but requiring additional configuration and setup.

  4. Monitoring and diagnostics: Azure Service Fabric provides built-in monitoring and diagnostics capabilities, allowing developers to easily monitor the health and performance of their applications. Kubernetes, on the other hand, requires the use of external monitoring and logging tools for monitoring and diagnostics, offering more flexibility but requiring additional setup and configuration.

  5. Application lifecycle management: Azure Service Fabric provides comprehensive application lifecycle management capabilities, including rolling upgrades and versioning, making it easier to manage and upgrade applications. Kubernetes also supports rolling upgrades but does not provide built-in versioning and advanced application lifecycle management features.

  6. Support and ecosystem: Azure Service Fabric is a Microsoft product and has strong integration with other Azure services, providing a consistent and unified experience for users. Kubernetes, being an open-source platform, has a larger community and ecosystem, with support from major cloud providers and a wide range of third-party tools and services available.

In summary, Azure Service Fabric is a platform-as-a-service offering that abstracts away the underlying infrastructure and provides comprehensive application management features. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is an open-source container orchestration platform that offers more flexibility in terms of infrastructure setup and containerization. The choice between the two platforms depends on the specific requirements and preferences of the users.

Decisions about Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes
Simon Reymann
Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 30 upvotes · 11.6M views

Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

  • GitHub (incl. GitHub Pages/Markdown for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
  • Respectively Git as revision control system
  • SourceTree as Git GUI
  • Visual Studio Code as IDE
  • CircleCI for continuous integration (automatize development process)
  • Prettier / TSLint / ESLint as code linter
  • SonarQube as quality gate
  • Docker as container management (incl. Docker Compose for multi-container application management)
  • VirtualBox for operating system simulation tests
  • Kubernetes as cluster management for docker containers
  • Heroku for deploying in test environments
  • nginx as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
  • SSLMate (using OpenSSL) for certificate management
  • Amazon EC2 (incl. Amazon S3) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
  • PostgreSQL as preferred database system
  • Redis 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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Pros of Azure Service Fabric
Pros of Kubernetes
  • 5
    Intelligent, fast, reliable
  • 4
    Runs most of Azure core services
  • 3
    Reliability
  • 3
    Superior programming models
  • 3
    More reliable than Kubernetes
  • 3
    Open source
  • 2
    Quickest recovery and healing in the world
  • 1
    Deploy anywhere
  • 1
    Is data storage technology
  • 1
    Battle hardened in Azure > 10 Years
  • 166
    Leading docker container management solution
  • 129
    Simple and powerful
  • 107
    Open source
  • 76
    Backed by google
  • 58
    The right abstractions
  • 25
    Scale services
  • 20
    Replication controller
  • 11
    Permission managment
  • 9
    Supports autoscaling
  • 8
    Simple
  • 8
    Cheap
  • 6
    Self-healing
  • 5
    Open, powerful, stable
  • 5
    Reliable
  • 5
    No cloud platform lock-in
  • 5
    Promotes modern/good infrascture practice
  • 4
    Scalable
  • 4
    Quick cloud setup
  • 3
    Custom and extensibility
  • 3
    Captain of Container Ship
  • 3
    Cloud Agnostic
  • 3
    Backed by Red Hat
  • 3
    Runs on azure
  • 3
    A self healing environment with rich metadata
  • 2
    Everything of CaaS
  • 2
    Gke
  • 2
    Golang
  • 2
    Easy setup
  • 2
    Expandable
  • 2
    Sfg

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Cons of Azure Service Fabric
Cons of Kubernetes
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 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
    • 1
      Additional vendor lock-in (Docker)
    • 1
      More moving parts to secure
    • 1
      Additional Technology Overhead

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    What is 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.

    What is Kubernetes?

    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.

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    What companies use Azure Service Fabric?
    What companies use Kubernetes?
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    What tools integrate with Azure Service Fabric?
    What tools integrate with Kubernetes?

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    What are some alternatives to Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes?
    Docker
    The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere
    Azure Container Service
    Azure Container Service optimizes the configuration of popular open source tools and technologies specifically for Azure. You get an open solution that offers portability for both your containers and your application configuration. You select the size, the number of hosts, and choice of orchestrator tools, and Container Service handles everything else.
    AWS Lambda
    AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.
    Azure App Service
    Quickly build, deploy, and scale web apps created with popular frameworks .NET, .NET Core, Node.js, Java, PHP, Ruby, or Python, in containers or running on any operating system. Meet rigorous, enterprise-grade performance, security, and compliance requirements by using the fully managed platform for your operational and monitoring tasks.
    AWS Fargate
    AWS Fargate is a technology for Amazon ECS and EKS* that allows you to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters. With AWS Fargate, you no longer have to provision, configure, and scale clusters of virtual machines to run containers.
    See all alternatives