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Kubernetes vs Apache Mesos: What are the differences?
Developers describe Kubernetes as "Manage a cluster of Linux containers as a single system to accelerate Dev and simplify Ops". 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. On the other hand, Apache Mesos is detailed as "Develop and run resource-efficient distributed systems". Apache Mesos is a cluster manager that simplifies the complexity of running applications on a shared pool of servers.
Kubernetes belongs to "Container Tools" category of the tech stack, while Apache Mesos can be primarily classified under "Cluster Management".
Some of the features offered by Kubernetes are:
- 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
On the other hand, Apache Mesos provides the following key features:
- Fault-tolerant replicated master using ZooKeeper
- Scalability to 10,000s of nodes
- Isolation between tasks with Linux Containers
"Leading docker container management solution" is the top reason why over 131 developers like Kubernetes, while over 19 developers mention "Easy scaling" as the leading cause for choosing Apache Mesos.
Kubernetes is an open source tool with 54.2K GitHub stars and 18.8K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Kubernetes's open source repository on GitHub.
Slack, Shopify, and Starbucks are some of the popular companies that use Kubernetes, whereas Apache Mesos is used by PayPal, SendGrid, and HubSpot. Kubernetes has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1018 company stacks & 1060 developers stacks; compared to Apache Mesos, which is listed in 61 company stacks and 19 developer stacks.
The problem I have is I want to choose a Private PaaS to install it on my own infra and provide a platform as a service to my own clients. I need something like OpenShift or Jelastic...
The most important factors for me are that it has to be on-premise support, extensible (we can add feature to it), supports containers (docker, lxc, ...) supports databases (MySQL, Redis, mongo...), support load balancers, support software-defined storages (ceph, minio,...) monitoring and we can sell it to our own clients.
Do you have any idea?

Mesos-Enthuasiast may criticise me for my statement, but Kubernetes has simply won the race. Most companies I work with have a Kubernetes strategy. With that backing the platform will continue to grow whereas Mesos will become a niche.

In your position I'd start by talking to customers and understanding their requirements. Unfortunately, although Apache Mesos + Marathon is generally liked more and simpler, it's still a commercially owned space when you run into trouble. On the other hand Kubernetes is more open and popular (check search results, about 10X) and customers like that they can move around among GKE and AWS and other Kubernetes environments. So although I think Kubernetes is overly complex for the newcomer, (and you may need Helm as well) it's going to be more popular with your customers. Also, Kubernetes is fairly open in terms of extensibility (esp if you work in Go lang).

From a developer perspective, any new project we will be working on, unless specifically requested by the client, will be on top of Kubernetes. Actually, Kubernetes compete with Marathon as a container orchestration software, and as far as I know, one could run Kubernetes over Mesos. So, assuming your PaaS will serve developers, I would take a closer look at Kubernetes first. The goal for Mesos project is to be a sort of kernel for distributed computing, while Kubernetes is to manage the deploy and load balacing o of containers. Either way, you will need a container orchestration solution and the one to go with, given the current tendency in the market and the ecosystem around it, is Kubernetes.
We develop rapidly with docker-compose orchestrated services, however, for production - we utilise the very best ideas that Kubernetes has to offer: SCALE! We can scale when needed, setting a maximum and minimum level of nodes for each application layer - scaling only when the load balancer needs it. This allowed us to reduce our devops costs by 40% whilst also maintaining an SLA of 99.87%.
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 Kubernetes
- Leading docker container management solution161
- Simple and powerful126
- Open source102
- Backed by google75
- The right abstractions56
- Scale services24
- Replication controller19
- Permission managment9
- Simple7
- Supports autoscaling7
- Cheap6
- Self-healing4
- No cloud platform lock-in4
- Reliable4
- Open, powerful, stable3
- Scalable3
- Quick cloud setup3
- Promotes modern/good infrascture practice3
- Backed by Red Hat2
- Cloud Agnostic2
- Runs on azure2
- Custom and extensibility2
- Captain of Container Ship2
- A self healing environment with rich metadata2
- Golang1
- Easy setup1
- Everything of CaaS1
- Sfg1
- Expandable1
- Gke1
Pros of Apache Mesos
- Easy scaling21
- Web UI6
- Fault-Tolerant2
- Elastic Distributed System1
- High-Available1
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Cons of Kubernetes
- Poor workflow for development14
- Steep learning curve12
- Orchestrates only infrastructure6
- High resource requirements for on-prem clusters3
Cons of Apache Mesos
- Not for long term1
- Depends on Zookeeper1