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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Monitoring
  4. Fault Tolerance Tools
  5. Hystrix vs Kubernetes

Hystrix vs Kubernetes

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Hystrix
Hystrix
Stacks309
Followers163
Votes2
GitHub Stars24.4K
Forks4.7K
Kubernetes
Kubernetes
Stacks61.2K
Followers52.8K
Votes685

Hystrix vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

Hystrix and Kubernetes are two popular technologies used in the field of software development and deployment. While both serve different purposes, they share some similarities but also have some key differences.

  1. Scalability and Fault Tolerance: Hystrix is a library that provides fault tolerance and latency tolerance for distributed systems. It helps in preventing cascading failures and provides fallback options when errors occur. On the other hand, Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration platform that enables the management and scaling of containerized applications. It automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containers across multiple hosts, making it easy to achieve fault tolerance and scalability.

  2. Application Level vs Infrastructure Level: Hystrix operates at the application level, providing fault tolerance and resilience features to individual applications. It helps in handling failures and recovering from them gracefully within the application. Kubernetes, on the other hand, operates at the infrastructure level, managing the deployment and scaling of containerized applications across a cluster of machines. It provides a higher-level abstraction for managing and orchestrating applications, making it easier to automate various tasks.

  3. Granularity of Control: Hystrix offers a fine-grained control over the behavior of individual service calls within an application. It allows developers to define various parameters like timeouts, circuit-breaker thresholds, and concurrency limits at a per-service-call level. Kubernetes, on the other hand, works at a higher level of abstraction and provides control over the entire application or microservice. It allows developers to define scaling rules, resource limits, and deployment strategies for the entire application or set of services.

  4. Monitoring and Metrics: Hystrix provides detailed monitoring and metrics for the individual service calls and helps in analyzing the performance and behavior of the services. It offers insights into various aspects like request volumes, error rates, circuit breaker state, and latency distributions. Kubernetes, on the other hand, provides monitoring and metrics at the infrastructure level. It offers insights into resource utilization, application metrics, and health status of the containers and nodes.

  5. Flexibility and Portability: Hystrix is a library that can be used in various programming languages and frameworks. It can be integrated with existing applications without major changes to the codebase. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a platform that can be used with any container runtime and supports multiple programming languages. It provides a flexible and portable environment for deploying and managing applications.

  6. Scope of Management: Hystrix is focused on the management of resilience and fault tolerance within an individual application or service. It provides features like circuit breakers, fallbacks, and timeouts for making the application more resilient to failures. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is a platform that manages the entire lifecycle of applications. It handles tasks like deployment, scaling, rolling updates, and self-healing of applications.

In summary, Hystrix and Kubernetes are different in terms of their focus, scope, and level of abstraction. Hystrix provides application-level fault tolerance and resilience features, while Kubernetes offers infrastructure-level container orchestration and management capabilities.

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Advice on Hystrix, 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

Hystrix
Hystrix
Kubernetes
Kubernetes

Hystrix is a latency and fault tolerance library designed to isolate points of access to remote systems, services and 3rd party libraries, stop cascading failure and enable resilience in complex distributed systems where failure is inevitable.

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.

Latency and Fault Tolerance;Realtime Operations; Concurrency
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
GitHub Stars
24.4K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
4.7K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
309
Stacks
61.2K
Followers
163
Followers
52.8K
Votes
2
Votes
685
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 2
    Cirkit breaker
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
No integrations available
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 Hystrix, Kubernetes?

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.

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.

Tutum

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kitematic

Simple Docker App management for Mac OS X

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