Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

k3s

92
240
+ 1
16
Rancher

942
1.5K
+ 1
644
Add tool

Rancher vs k3s: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Rancher and k3s

Rancher and k3s are both container orchestration platforms, but they have several key differences.

  1. Architecture: Rancher is built on top of Kubernetes and provides a rich set of features for managing and scaling clusters. On the other hand, k3s is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution designed for resource-constrained environments with reduced memory and CPU requirements.

  2. Resource Usage: Rancher requires more resources to run compared to k3s. Rancher's feature-rich nature makes it more suitable for larger-scale deployments where resource availability is not a constraint. Conversely, k3s is optimized for low-resource environments such as edge computing or IoT devices.

  3. Installation Complexity: Rancher installation involves setting up a Rancher server and then creating and managing Kubernetes clusters within it. This requires more steps and configuration compared to k3s, which can be quickly installed with a single command and includes a built-in Kubernetes cluster.

  4. Maintenance and Upgrades: Rancher provides a robust management UI and extensive features for cluster management, monitoring, logging, and more, making it easier to manage and upgrade clusters. On the other hand, k3s offers a minimalistic approach, which can make maintenance and upgrades more hands-on and manual.

  5. Production Readiness: Rancher is widely adopted and has been battle-tested in large-scale production deployments. It offers a mature feature set, extensive ecosystem integrations, and active community support. While k3s is rapidly gaining popularity, it is relatively newer and might not have all the features or ecosystem support needed for highly complex production use cases.

  6. Community and Support: Rancher has a large and active community, with regular releases, updates, and a vibrant ecosystem of plugins and third-party integrations. K3s is also backed by Rancher Labs but being a newer project, it might have a smaller user base and ecosystem support.

In Summary, Rancher is a feature-rich Kubernetes management platform suitable for larger deployments, while k3s is a lightweight, resource-efficient distribution designed for low-resource environments and edge computing.

Get Advice from developers at your company using StackShare Enterprise. Sign up for StackShare Enterprise.
Learn More
Pros of k3s
Pros of Rancher
  • 6
    Lightweight
  • 4
    Easy
  • 2
    Replication Controller
  • 2
    Scale Services
  • 2
    Open Source
  • 103
    Easy to use
  • 79
    Open source and totally free
  • 63
    Multi-host docker-compose support
  • 58
    Load balancing and health check included
  • 58
    Simple
  • 44
    Rolling upgrades, green/blue upgrades feature
  • 42
    Dns and service discovery out-of-the-box
  • 37
    Only requires docker
  • 34
    Multitenant and permission management
  • 29
    Easy to use and feature rich
  • 11
    Cross cloud compatible
  • 11
    Does everything needed for a docker infrastructure
  • 8
    Simple and powerful
  • 8
    Next-gen platform
  • 7
    Very Docker-friendly
  • 6
    Support Kubernetes and Swarm
  • 6
    Application catalogs with stack templates (wizards)
  • 6
    Supports Apache Mesos, Docker Swarm, and Kubernetes
  • 6
    Rolling and blue/green upgrades deployments
  • 6
    High Availability service: keeps your app up 24/7
  • 5
    Easy to use service catalog
  • 4
    Very intuitive UI
  • 4
    IaaS-vendor independent, supports hybrid/multi-cloud
  • 4
    Awesome support
  • 3
    Scalable
  • 2
    Requires less infrastructure requirements

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of k3s
Cons of Rancher
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 10
      Hosting Rancher can be complicated

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    What is 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.

    What is 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.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use k3s?
    What companies use Rancher?
    See which teams inside your own company are using k3s or Rancher.
    Sign up for StackShare EnterpriseLearn More

    Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions

    What tools integrate with k3s?
    What tools integrate with Rancher?

    Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions

    Blog Posts

    PythonDockerKubernetes+7
    3
    1095
    May 21 2020 at 12:02AM

    Rancher Labs

    KubernetesAmazon EC2Grafana+12
    5
    1486
    Apr 16 2020 at 5:34AM

    Rancher Labs

    KubernetesRancher+2
    2
    928
    What are some alternatives to k3s and Rancher?
    Kind
    It is a tool for running local Kubernetes clusters using Docker container “nodes”. It was primarily designed for testing Kubernetes itself, but may be used for local development or CI.
    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.
    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
    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.
    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.
    See all alternatives