Fleet = Scaling deployments on demand
Tags: devops, productivity
Published: 2023-06-29 21:41:35

Fleet is an open-source GitOps framework that enables managing and deploying Kubernetes clusters and applications at scale. Rancher, on the other hand, is a complete Kubernetes management platform that provides features like multi-cluster management, centralized authentication, and user-friendly UI. Let's explore both Fleet and Rancher in more detail:

## Fleet:
Fleet is a GitOps framework built on top of Kubernetes. It allows you to declare your desired cluster state and application configurations in Git repositories. Fleet then reconciles the state of your Kubernetes clusters to match the desired state defined in the Git repositories. Key features of Fleet include:
GitOps Workflow: Fleet follows the GitOps approach, where the desired state of clusters and applications is stored in Git repositories. This enables version-controlled, auditable, and collaborative management of infrastructure and application configurations.

**Cluster Fleet Management:** Fleet allows you to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters, ensuring consistency across all clusters by applying declarative configurations stored in Git.

**Application Deployment:** Fleet facilitates deploying and managing applications across multiple clusters. It can synchronize applications defined in Git repositories to the desired state in the target clusters.

**Configuration Drift Detection:** Fleet continuously monitors the actual state of clusters and alerts you of any configuration drift, ensuring that clusters remain in the desired state.

Fleet is often used in conjunction with Rancher, which provides a user-friendly interface and additional management capabilities for Kubernetes clusters.

## Rancher:
Rancher is a comprehensive Kubernetes management platform that simplifies the deployment, management, and operation of Kubernetes clusters. It supports various Kubernetes distributions and provides the following features:
Multi-Cluster Management: Rancher allows you to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters from a centralized control plane. You can provision and scale clusters, monitor cluster health, and perform upgrades and maintenance tasks across all clusters.

**User-Friendly UI:** Rancher provides an intuitive web-based user interface for managing Kubernetes clusters and applications. It offers a graphical representation of clusters, resource monitoring, and simplified workflows for managing deployments.

**Authentication and Access Control:** Rancher provides centralized authentication and access control, allowing you to define user roles, permissions, and fine-grained access policies for clusters and resources.

**Application Catalog:** Rancher offers an application catalog with pre-configured templates for deploying popular applications. It simplifies the process of deploying and managing applications on Kubernetes.

**Infrastructure Provisioning:** Rancher integrates with various cloud providers to simplify the provisioning of infrastructure resources for Kubernetes clusters.

**High Availability and Scalability:** Rancher supports high availability configurations and can scale horizontally to handle large-scale deployments.

Rancher incorporates Fleet as a core component, allowing users to leverage GitOps workflows and Fleet's cluster management capabilities through the Rancher UI.

In summary, Fleet is an open-source GitOps framework focused on cluster and application management, while Rancher is a comprehensive Kubernetes management platform that provides features like multi-cluster management, user-friendly UI, and additional management capabilities.