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Docker Machine vs Docker Swarm: What are the differences?
- Key Difference 1: Target Audience Docker Machine: Docker Machine is primarily designed for individual developers or small teams who need an easy way to provision and manage Docker hosts.
Docker Swarm: Docker Swarm is designed for larger organizations or enterprises that require orchestration and management of containers at scale.
- Key Difference 2: Functionality Docker Machine: Docker Machine is focused on providing a way to create and manage Docker hosts on various virtualization platforms or cloud providers. It simplifies the process of setting up Docker on different environments.
Docker Swarm: Docker Swarm is a native clustering and orchestration solution for Docker. It allows you to create and manage a swarm of Docker nodes, enabling automatic scaling, load balancing, and high availability across a cluster of hosts.
- Key Difference 3: Distributed Architecture Docker Machine: Docker Machine operates on a single Docker host, deploying containers on a single machine. It is suitable for small-scale deployments.
Docker Swarm: Docker Swarm operates in a distributed manner, allowing you to create a swarm of Docker nodes that can span across multiple machines or hosts. It provides the ability to schedule containers across the swarm, making it suitable for large-scale deployments.
- Key Difference 4: Integration Docker Machine: Docker Machine integrates with various virtualization platforms and cloud providers, such as VirtualBox, VMware, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, etc. This allows you to easily provision Docker hosts on these platforms.
Docker Swarm: Docker Swarm integrates seamlessly with the Docker ecosystem, including Docker Engine, Docker Compose, and Docker CLI. It provides a unified way to manage and orchestrate containers within a swarm, using familiar Docker tools and commands.
- Key Difference 5: Scalability Docker Machine: Docker Machine is not primarily focused on scalability, as it is designed for individual developers or small teams. It can provision multiple Docker hosts, but lacks the advanced scalability features of Docker Swarm.
Docker Swarm: Docker Swarm is built for scalability and can handle large-scale deployments. It provides features like automatic load balancing, scaling containers up or down based on demand, and adding or removing nodes from the swarm dynamically.
- Key Difference 6: High Availability Docker Machine: Docker Machine does not provide built-in high availability features. If a Docker host fails, the containers running on it may become unresponsive until the host is manually restored or replaced.
Docker Swarm: Docker Swarm provides built-in high availability features, ensuring that containers are automatically rescheduled on other healthy nodes in case of a failure. It maintains the desired state of the swarm, ensuring high availability and failover.
In Summary, Docker Machine is a tool intended for individual developers or small teams to provision and manage Docker hosts, while Docker Swarm is a native clustering and orchestration solution for larger organizations or enterprises, providing advanced features like automatic scaling, load balancing, high availability, and seamless integration with the Docker ecosystem.
Hello, we have a bunch of local hosts (Linux and Windows) where Docker containers are running with bamboo agents on them. Currently, each container is installed as a system service. Each host is set up manually. I want to improve the system by adding some sort of orchestration software that should install, update and check for consistency in my docker containers. I don't need any clouds, all hosts are local. I'd prefer simple solutions. What orchestration system should I choose?
If you just want the basic orchestration between a set of defined hosts, go with Docker Swarm. If you want more advanced orchestration + flexibility in terms of resource management and load balancing go with Kubernetes. In both cases, you can make it even more complex while making the whole architecture more understandable and replicable by using Terraform.
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.
Pros of Docker Machine
- Easy docker hosts management12
Pros of Docker Swarm
- Docker friendly55
- Easy to setup46
- Standard Docker API40
- Easy to use38
- Native23
- Free22
- Clustering made easy13
- Simple usage12
- Integral part of docker11
- Cross Platform6
- Labels and annotations5
- Performance5
- Easy Networking3
- Shallow learning curve3
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Cons of Docker Machine
Cons of Docker Swarm
- Low adoption9
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