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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Integration
  4. Continuous Integration
  5. Buildkite vs Kubernetes

Buildkite vs Kubernetes

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Buildkite
Buildkite
Stacks210
Followers231
Votes115
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Stacks61.2K
Followers52.8K
Votes685

Buildkite vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

Key differences between Buildkite and Kubernetes are outlined below.

  1. Deployment Methodology: Buildkite is primarily a continuous integration and delivery tool that focuses on building, testing, and deploying code changes. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that manages the deployment, scaling, and operation of application containers. While Buildkite focuses on CI/CD workflows, Kubernetes is more about managing containerized applications in a production environment.

  2. Scalability: Kubernetes is designed to scale containers and manage large-scale applications across multiple nodes in a cluster. It provides automatic scaling, load balancing, and self-healing capabilities for applications. In contrast, Buildkite is more limited in terms of scalability as its primary focus is on the build and deployment aspects of the software development process rather than managing large distributed applications.

  3. Resource Management: Kubernetes provides advanced resource management features such as setting resource requests and limits for containers, allocating resources based on requirements, and efficiently utilizing resources in a cluster environment. Buildkite, on the other hand, does not have the same level of resource management capabilities as it is not designed to manage resources at the container level.

  4. Networking: Kubernetes includes built-in networking features that enable communication between containers, services, and pods within a cluster. It provides networking policies for controlling traffic and load balancing for distributing incoming requests. Buildkite does not have built-in networking capabilities as its focus is on automating the build and deployment processes rather than managing communication between containers.

  5. Monitoring and Logging: Kubernetes offers robust monitoring and logging capabilities through tools like Prometheus and Fluentd, which enable users to track the performance and health of applications running on the platform. Buildkite, on the other hand, lacks built-in monitoring and logging features as it is more focused on the CI/CD pipeline automation rather than application monitoring and troubleshooting.

  6. Community Support and Ecosystem: Kubernetes has a vast open-source community and ecosystem with a wide range of plugins, tools, and resources available for users. It is continuously evolving and being supported by major tech companies. In comparison, Buildkite has a smaller community and a more niche focus on CI/CD, which may limit the breadth of available integrations and resources in comparison to Kubernetes.

In Summary, the key differences between Buildkite and Kubernetes lie in their primary focus on CI/CD workflows versus container orchestration, scalability, resource management, networking capabilities, monitoring and logging features, and the size and diversity of their respective communities and ecosystems.

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Advice on Buildkite, Kubernetes

Simon
Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

DecidedonGitHubGitHubGitHub PagesGitHub PagesMarkdownMarkdown

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

Detailed Comparison

Buildkite
Buildkite
Kubernetes
Kubernetes

CI and build automation tool that combines the power of your own build infrastructure with the convenience of a managed, centralized web UI. Used by Shopify, Basecamp, Digital Ocean, Venmo, Cochlear, Bugsnag and more.

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.

Fast and stable builds; Open source agent runs on almost any machine and architecture; Freedom to use your own internal or pre-release tools and services; Powerful distributed build tools; Key/value targeting of agents; Dynamic job allocation allows adding and removing build machines; Shared key/value and binary artifact stores for easily distributing build jobs regardless of machine or network; Integration with pull requests, deployments and releases; GitHub, Github Enterprise, Bitbucket, Gitlab or your own SCM; Slack, Hipchat, Webhooks, and LIFX notifications; Extensible per-project with agent hooks, webhooks and the rest API; GitHub Enterprise is supported standard; SSO
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
210
Stacks
61.2K
Followers
231
Followers
52.8K
Votes
115
Votes
685
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 18
    Great customer support
  • 17
    Github integration
  • 16
    Easy to use
  • 16
    Easy setup
  • 12
    Simplicity
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
Integrations
Slack
Slack
GitHub
GitHub
Docker
Docker
GitLab
GitLab
Heroku
Heroku
HipChat
HipChat
Bitbucket
Bitbucket
Git
Git
GitHub Enterprise
GitHub Enterprise
TestFlight
TestFlight
Vagrant
Vagrant
Docker
Docker
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
Ansible
Ansible
Google Kubernetes Engine
Google Kubernetes Engine

What are some alternatives to Buildkite, Kubernetes?

Jenkins

Jenkins

In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.

Travis CI

Travis CI

Free for open source projects, our CI environment provides multiple runtimes (e.g. Node.js or PHP versions), data stores and so on. Because of this, hosting your project on travis-ci.com means you can effortlessly test your library or applications against multiple runtimes and data stores without even having all of them installed locally.

Codeship

Codeship

Codeship runs your automated tests and configured deployment when you push to your repository. It takes care of managing and scaling the infrastructure so that you are able to test and release more frequently and get faster feedback for building the product your users need.

CircleCI

CircleCI

Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp.

Rancher

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

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.

TeamCity

TeamCity

TeamCity is a user-friendly continuous integration (CI) server for professional developers, build engineers, and DevOps. It is trivial to setup and absolutely free for small teams and open source projects.

Docker Swarm

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.

Drone.io

Drone.io

Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more.

wercker

wercker

Wercker is a CI/CD developer automation platform designed for Microservices & Container Architecture.

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