Docker Swarm Vs. Kubernetes — What You Really Need To Know 
Tags: docker, kubernetes, containers, amazoneks
Published: 2018-11-06 18:33:01

---
title: Docker Swarm Vs. Kubernetes — What You Really Need To Know 
published: true
description: “Docker Vs. Kubernetes” is a phrase that we all have started hearing increasingly often.  While both of these technologies deal with containers, at a closer look, they are not actually competitors. In fact, Kubernetes & Docker operate at different levels of the stack. Read this blog to know more.
tags: Docker, Kubernetes, Containers, Amazon EKS,  
---

<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">As the trend of working with virtual, Linux-based containers to build applications continues to grow, “Docker Swarm Vs. Kubernetes” are the phrases that we all have started hearing increasingly often.  While both of these technologies deal with containers, at a closer look, they are not actually competitors. </span>
<blockquote><span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Kubernetes and Docker operate at different levels of the stack – and you can actually use them together to make your applications better. </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Let us walk you through when and why you should go with Docker and/or Kubernetes. </span>
<h2><span style="color: #000000;"><b>Docker</b></span></h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Docker, as a platform, revolutionized the way software was packaged. Offering a sandbox view of the an operating system, it has added many advantages in building and running applications. With Docker, an application can be built quickly, deployed quickly, scaled rapidly, and run anytime, anywhere with minimal system resources.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Being  open source, Docker quickly exploded as a standard for packaging and distributing containerized applications. However, as it developed, new problems arose. These highly specialised packages or popularly known as “containers” had to be coordinated, communicate, sequenced, handled for storage considerations, etc. This is where Kubernetes came along.</span>
<h2><span style="color: #000000;"><b>Kubernetes </b></span></h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">At the very core, Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform.  It helps in running different containers across different machines, scaling up/down and adding/removing new containers as required. It also distributes load amongst containers. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">As the new wave of application development of building microservices have emerged, container orchestration and management have become an essential part of them. </span>
<blockquote><span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Docker realized this soon, and released their own container management service, Docker Swarm.</span></blockquote>
<h2><span style="color: #000000;"><b>Docker Swarm Vs. Kubernetes</b></span></h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Docker and Kubernetes can actually work together. As far as management platforms go, you can use either Kubernetes or Docker Swarm for your Docker engines. Kubernetes currently holds the largest market share and is pretty much the standard platform. It works around the concept of pods, which are scheduling units (and can contain one or more containers) in the Kubernetes ecosystem and they are distributed among nodes to provide high availability.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">It has the advantage of using years of research done by Google, hence leveraging the expertise. Being open source, it has a vibrant, growing community with plenty of helpful resources, and guidance available for anyone looking. It can run on either a public cloud service or on premises, and is easy to learn and implement.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Docker Swarm has the advantage of tightly integrated into the Docker ecosystem, and uses its own API. Its filtering and scheduling system enables the selection of optimal nodes in a cluster to deploy containers.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">As it is developed by Docker itself, Docker Swarm removes many compatibility and other differences and integrates smoothly. Kubernetes usually is not a complete solution and requires custom plug-ins to set up. If you use Docker swarm, all these dependencies are handled well within the ecosystem, making installation and setup really smooth.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">However, Docker Swarm is not extensively used as Kubernetes. Hence, the community and support around it are not as expansive and convenient to reach out to. Most cloud providers today offer Kubernetes as a service.</span>
<h3><span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">In Summary,</span></h3>
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<img class="alignnone wp-image-988" src="https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/dclhdhonururot55noak.png" alt="Docker Swarm Vs. Kubernetes" width="1024" height="2000" />

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<h2><span style="color: #000000;"><b>A Use Case: Docker Swarm Vs. Kubernetes </b></span></h2>
<span style="color: #000000;"><a href="https://www.bugsnag.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bugsnag</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, an error reporting service, wanted to containerize their event processing pipeline. Their event pipeline has been processing 220 million application errors per day, </span><a href="https://blog.bugsnag.com/container-orchestration-with-docker-swarm-mode/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">approximately 150k per minute</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. They chose Docker Swarm over Kubernetes as the latter was “overly complex to run a polling Node.js app on a fleet of nodes and would have been an overkill to deploy and operate”.</span></span>
<h2><span style="color: #000000;"><b>Final Argument</b></span></h2>
<span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Kubernetes offers more customization options and extensive use, and is suitable for people looking to set up parameters completely on their own, whereas Docker Swarm is best for people looking to quickly set up a containerized application and get it running.</span>

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<h3><span style="font-weight: 400; color: #000000;">Which platform do you think suits the best for your needs -- Docker or Kubernetes? Tweet your thoughts at <a href="https://twitter.com/totalcloudio">@totalcloudio.</a> </span><span style="color: #000000;">Do follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/totalcloudio">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://medium.com/@Totalcloudio">Medium</a>.</span></h3>

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<span style="color: #000000;"><a href="http://blog.totalcloud.io/docker-vs-kubernetes-really-need-know/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Originally published at blog.totalcloud.io.</span></a>

<span style="color: #000000;"> Note: Originally published at <a href="https://blog.totalcloud.io/docker-vs-kubernetes-really-need-know/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> blog.totalcloud.io </a> on April 9, 2018.
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