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Kubernetes vs Vagrant: 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, Vagrant is detailed as "A tool for building and distributing development environments". Vagrant provides the framework and configuration format to create and manage complete portable development environments. These development environments can live on your computer or in the cloud, and are portable between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
Kubernetes and Vagrant are primarily classified as "Container" and "Virtual Machine Management" tools respectively.
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, Vagrant provides the following key features:
- Boxes
- Up And SSH
- Synced Folders
"Leading docker container management solution", "Simple and powerful" and "Open source" are the key factors why developers consider Kubernetes; whereas "Development environments", "Simple bootstraping" and "Free" are the primary reasons why Vagrant is favored.
Kubernetes and Vagrant are both open source tools. It seems that Kubernetes with 55K GitHub stars and 19.1K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Vagrant with 18.6K GitHub stars and 3.74K GitHub forks.
Google, Slack, and Shopify are some of the popular companies that use Kubernetes, whereas Vagrant is used by Airbnb, Shopify, and Coursera. Kubernetes has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1046 company stacks & 1096 developers stacks; compared to Vagrant, which is listed in 802 company stacks and 478 developer stacks.
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 solution163
- Simple and powerful128
- Open source105
- Backed by google76
- The right abstractions58
- Scale services25
- Replication controller20
- Permission managment11
- Simple8
- Cheap8
- Supports autoscaling8
- Self-healing5
- No cloud platform lock-in5
- Reliable5
- Scalable4
- Open, powerful, stable4
- Quick cloud setup4
- Promotes modern/good infrascture practice4
- Backed by Red Hat3
- A self healing environment with rich metadata3
- Captain of Container Ship3
- Cloud Agnostic3
- Custom and extensibility3
- Runs on azure3
- Gke2
- Everything of CaaS2
- Sfg2
- Expandable2
- Golang2
- Easy setup2
Pros of Vagrant
- Development environments352
- Simple bootstraping290
- Free237
- Boxes139
- Provisioning130
- Portable84
- Synced folders81
- Reproducible69
- Ssh51
- Very flexible44
- Works well, can be replicated easily with other devs5
- Easy-to-share, easy-to-version dev configuration5
- Great3
- Just works3
- Quick way to get running2
- DRY - "Do Not Repeat Yourself"1
- Container Friendly1
- What is vagrant?1
- Good documentation1
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Cons of Kubernetes
- Steep learning curve15
- Poor workflow for development15
- Orchestrates only infrastructure8
- High resource requirements for on-prem clusters4
- Too heavy for simple systems2
- Additional vendor lock-in (Docker)1
- More moving parts to secure1
- Additional Technology Overhead1
Cons of Vagrant
- Can become v complex w prod. provisioner (Salt, etc.)2
- Multiple VMs quickly eat up disk space2
- Development environment that kills your battery1