> You linked Swarm CA renewal operations; this is maybe 1/50 of the functionality of cert-manager. Is there a product like cert-manager that I can run on Swarm that's tightly integrated?

> Why not have ingress intrinsically linked to the underlying reaources like k8s does? Your suggestion means that someone needs to come up with a methodology and automation to update ingress with Swarm. Yeah, it's obviously possible but imo, Traefik ingress reaources are way easier to manage with config spread across far fewer places.

Traefik can provide a lightweight ingress for Docker Swarm clusters alongside ensuring most of the certificate related functionality that you might want for web apps: https://traefik.io/

In particular, here's an example of using it with Docker Swarm: https://dockerswarm.rocks/traefik/

It integrates well enough that you can set up listening for particular ports, domain names, set up basicauth, use Let's Encrypt for certificates and do many other things with labels inside of your Docker Compose file!

> Storage.. I have an nfs storage provider in k8s which allows me to dynamically create storage with lifecycle management included... for free... just because I'm using k8s.

Docker also supports volume plugins, some of which were carried out of the base offering not to create needless bloat (much like what K3s does with many other in tree plugins of the heavyweight Kubernetes distros): https://docs.docker.com/engine/extend/plugins_volume/

Here's a pretty good documentation page on how to set them up and use them: https://docs.docker.com/storage/volumes/#share-data-among-ma...

You'll find examples of SSHFS, NFS, CIFS/Samba there, which should cover most base use cases. The latter two are supported by the default "local" driver (which feels like a naming failure on their part), so it's safe to say that Docker and Docker Swarm support both NFS and CIFS/Samba out of the box.

> DR as in something happens to my house or other technical issues which bring down my cluster. I would posit that it's much easier for me to restore a cluster because it's all yaml and imo more descriptive and capable than swarm yaml syntax.

I'm afraid i don't follow here.

Here's how you set up a cluster: https://docs.docker.com/engine/swarm/swarm-tutorial/create-s...

There are also commands for managing nodes within the Swarm: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/node/

There are also commands for managing the stacks that are deployed: https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/stack/

That's literally it. Verbose YAML doesn't imply any additional quality. If you want, feel free to look at the Compose specification too see all of the supported options: https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/compose-file-v3...

With Swarm, i've actually found that it's actually very easy to both manage the cluster, resolve any issues (because of very few moving parts), or even just wipe it all and create it anew with all of the deployments in a few commands. Furthermore, there is a very lovely Ansible Swarm module if you'd like: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/communit...

In short, fewer moving parts equal easier administration and fewer Byzantine failures in this case.

> I think you get my point. Yes, you can do it all with Swarm but with things like k3s and k0s, it's just as easy to start using k8s. And way more help, docs, and tooling to boot.

K3s and other projects like it are a step in the right direction for Kubernetes in smaller deployments! That said, in my experience, the documentation of Docker Swarm is comparatively better to that of many of the Kubernetes distro projects, simply because of how mature and stable Docker and Docker Swarm both are.

I don't doubt that the situation will change in a few years, but until then, Swarm is more than enough.