Kong vs Kubernetes

Overview

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

Kong

Stacks671

Followers1.5K

Votes139

GitHub Stars42.1K

Forks5.0K

Kong vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Scaling and Orchestration: Kubernetes is primarily designed for container orchestration and is focused on managing, scaling, and automating the deployment of containerized applications across a cluster of machines. On the other hand, Kong is an API gateway that acts as a proxy layer between clients and backend services, providing additional functionalities like traffic routing, security, and rate limiting.
Service Discovery: Kubernetes offers a built-in service discovery mechanism, allowing containers to discover and communicate with other containers within the cluster using DNS. Kong, on the other hand, does not provide service discovery natively but can be integrated with external service discovery tools like Consul or etcd.
Load Balancing: Kubernetes provides load balancing capabilities out of the box, distributing incoming requests across multiple replicas of a service. Kong, being an API gateway, offers more advanced load balancing features like load balancing algorithms, circuit breakers, and health checks, providing fine-grained control over routing requests to backend services.
API Management: Kong is specifically designed for managing APIs, providing features like authentication, authorization, rate limiting, request/response transformations, and analytics. Kubernetes, on the other hand, focuses on container orchestration and does not offer these API management functionalities out of the box.
Extensibility and Middleware: Kong is highly extensible, allowing developers to write custom plugins to extend its core functionality. These plugins can be used to add additional features or customize the behavior of Kong. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is not as extensible when it comes to adding new functionalities or customizing its behavior.
Deployment Complexity: Kubernetes has a steeper learning curve and requires a deeper understanding of containerization, networking, and infrastructure management. It requires more setup and configuration compared to Kong, which can be easily deployed as a standalone application without the need for complex infrastructure management.

In Summary, Kubernetes is primarily focused on container orchestration, providing scalability, and managing containerized applications, while Kong is an API gateway that specializes in managing APIs, providing advanced features like traffic routing, security, and rate limiting.

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Advice on Kubernetes, Kong

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

Decidedon

GitHub

GitHub Pages

Markdown

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

Prateek

Mar 14, 2020

Decided

Istio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn-keyIstio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn key solution with Rancher whereas Kong completely lacks here. Traffic distribution in Istio can be done via canary, a/b, shadowing, HTTP headers, ACL, whitelist whereas in Kong it's limited to canary, ACL, blue-green, proxy caching. Istio has amazing community support which is visible via Github stars or releases when comparing both.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Kubernetes	Kong
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.	Kong is a scalable, open source API Layer (also known as an API Gateway, or API Middleware). Kong controls layer 4 and 7 traffic and is extended through Plugins, which provide extra functionality and services beyond the core platform.
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	Logging: Log requests and responses to your system over TCP, UDP or to disk; OAuth2.0: Add easily an OAuth2.0 authentication to your APIs; Monitoring: Live monitoring provides key load and performance server metrics; IP-restriction: Whitelist or blacklist IPs that can make requests; Authentication: Manage consumer credentials query string and header tokens; Rate-limiting: Block and throttle requests based on IP or authentication; Transformations: Add, remove or manipulate HTTP params and headers on-the-fly; CORS: Enable cross-origin requests to your APIs that would otherwise be blocked; Anything: Need custom functionality? Extend Kong with your own Lua plugins;
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 42.1K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 5.0K
Stacks 61.2K	Stacks 671
Followers 52.8K	Followers 1.5K
Votes 685	Votes 139
Pros & Cons
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	Pros 37 Easy to maintain 32 Easy to install 26 Flexible 21 Great performance 7 Api blueprint
Integrations
Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine	Cassandra Docker Prometheus PostgreSQL NGINX Vagrant

What are some alternatives to Kubernetes, Kong?

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

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

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 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

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

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.

Amazon API Gateway

Amazon API Gateway handles all the tasks involved in accepting and processing up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent API calls, including traffic management, authorization and access control, monitoring, and API version management.

Tyk Cloud

Tyk is a leading Open Source API Gateway and Management Platform, featuring an API gateway, analytics, developer portal and dashboard. We power billions of transactions for thousands of innovative organisations.

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

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.

Related Comparisons

Kong vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Scaling and Orchestration: Kubernetes is primarily designed for container orchestration and is focused on managing, scaling, and automating the deployment of containerized applications across a cluster of machines. On the other hand, Kong is an API gateway that acts as a proxy layer between clients and backend services, providing additional functionalities like traffic routing, security, and rate limiting.
Service Discovery: Kubernetes offers a built-in service discovery mechanism, allowing containers to discover and communicate with other containers within the cluster using DNS. Kong, on the other hand, does not provide service discovery natively but can be integrated with external service discovery tools like Consul or etcd.
Load Balancing: Kubernetes provides load balancing capabilities out of the box, distributing incoming requests across multiple replicas of a service. Kong, being an API gateway, offers more advanced load balancing features like load balancing algorithms, circuit breakers, and health checks, providing fine-grained control over routing requests to backend services.
API Management: Kong is specifically designed for managing APIs, providing features like authentication, authorization, rate limiting, request/response transformations, and analytics. Kubernetes, on the other hand, focuses on container orchestration and does not offer these API management functionalities out of the box.
Extensibility and Middleware: Kong is highly extensible, allowing developers to write custom plugins to extend its core functionality. These plugins can be used to add additional features or customize the behavior of Kong. Kubernetes, on the other hand, is not as extensible when it comes to adding new functionalities or customizing its behavior.
Deployment Complexity: Kubernetes has a steeper learning curve and requires a deeper understanding of containerization, networking, and infrastructure management. It requires more setup and configuration compared to Kong, which can be easily deployed as a standalone application without the need for complex infrastructure management.

Kong vs Kubernetes

Overview