Apache Mesos vs. IBM Cloud Foundry vs. Kubernetes

There's really no reason to ever use Mesos. We switched over to Kubernetes and it's been a breath of fresh air - better CD support, easy CLI for browsing logs, no mysterious dangling redeploys. If you're looking for a tool to manage a fleet of Docker containers on VMs, Kubernetes beats Mesos by a wide margin.

Incentivized

As it is an open-source platform as a service, it is very easy to operate, scale, and deploy regardless of what programming language and framework it's written in. However, it could be improved in terms of scalability. There should be proper documentation for easier and clearer understanding to make the process smooth.

Incentivized

K8s should be avoided - If your application works well without being converted into microservices-based architecture & fits correctly in a VM, needs less scaling, have a fixed traffic pattern then it is better to keep away from Kubernetes. Otherwise, the operational challenges & technical expertise will add a lot to the OPEX. Also, if you're the one who thinks that containers consume fewer resources as compared to VMs then this is not true. As soon as you convert your application to a microservice-based architecture, a lot of components will add up, shooting your resource consumption even higher than VMs so, please beware. Kubernetes is a good choice - When the application needs quick scaling, is already in microservice-based architecture, has no fixed traffic pattern, most of the employees already have desired skills.

Incentivized

• Mesos may have many frameworks. If you have Mesos installed on your servers, you may use it for many kinds of tasks. Today we're running only web applications but the idea is to install a different framework for big data soon.
• There is a good community growing around it.

Incentivized

• Simplicity - the command line tool provided can get you up and running within minutes.
• Resourceful - IBM Cloud Foundry is built on top of the open source Cloud Foundry technology, so any resources you find online about Cloud Foundry generally can be applied.
• Feature rich - provides all the necessary features for a cloud based platform, such as auto-scaling, 0 downtime deployment.

Incentivized

• Complex cluster management can be done with simple commands with strong authentication and authorization schemes
• Exhaustive documentation and open community smoothens the learning process
• As a user a few concepts like pod, deployment and service are sufficient to go a long way

Incentivized

• Unreliable deployments that would fail for no good reason. Sometimes our Docker container would be "restarting" forever because Mesos thought it didn't have enough resources to start the container.
• Impossibly slow UI. Built in React under the hood with a lot of bloatware backed in, so loading the Mesos UI on a slow internet connection was painful.
• No real logging solution - it would stream "console.log()" output to the UI, but searching for logs wasn't really possible without downloading a huge file.
• No built-in support for redeploying containers from a CI. We had to create a service whose whole job was to expose an HTTP endpoint that restarted a container, and then made Circle CI ping the endpoint whenever we wanted to redeploy.

Incentivized

• Need: VISUALIZATION CAPABILITIES! Particularly with the Conversation Service.
• Need: Annotation capabilities for dialog nodes in Conversation Service.
• Need: Search/querying capabilities in Conversation Service
• Need: Clearer documentation of the S2T service. I had to use a third party website for an understanding of how to use this.

Incentivized

• Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
• The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively.
• Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking.

Incentivized

The Kubernetes is going to be highly likely renewed as the technologies that will be placed on top of it are long term as of planning. There shouldn't be any last minute changes in the adoption and I do not anticipate sudden change of the core underlying technology. It is just that the slow process of technology adoption that makes it hard to switch to something else.

It is an eminently usable platform. However, its popularity is overshadowed by its complexity. To properly leverage the capabilities and possibilities of Kubernetes as a platform, you need to have excellent understanding of your use case, even better understanding of whether you even need Kubernetes, and if yes - be ready to invest in good engineering support for the platform itself

Incentivized

No real support channel, the Mesos GitHub issues list was the only one we found and it wasn't particularly helpful.

Incentivized

Kubernetes is really great and their community is growing really fast (Google influence). We evaluated it in the beginning and it would fit for our web applications workload. We decided to proceed with Mesos because it has more potential. You may use a different framework for different kinds of tasks on Mesos. There is a Kubernetes framework for Mesos, by the way.

Incentivized

CF is what we initially went with to establish a development pipeline and start our cloud journey, now we are expanding this and although we are now pulling in many other tools and functions around CF, it is not being replaced. It stands out as having a key place working ‘with’ git, Kubernetes, IBM cloud etc, not against or segregated from it.

Incentivized

Most of the required features for any orchestration tool or framework, which is provided by Kubernetes. After understanding all modules and features of the K8S, it is the best fit for us as compared with others out there.

Incentivized

• It's optimizing our resources.
• It's improving our process. This argument is not just for Mesos, but we needed a tool like this to start changing and it works like a charm.
• It's open source.

Incentivized

• IBM Bluemix is mainly a foundation enabler at this stage, although our business plan does look promising.
• The low cost of development on Bluemix for a start-up like us is so helpful......we had no spare cash for this project besides what we could save or borrow at first, and that wasn't much. We are still trying to attract venture capital to cover the main Cordova Coding effort plus the launch "Cash Burn".
• Features like push notifications, mobile-back end, and world-beating security help us to sell our SaaS products/services.
• The pure (usually!) functionality of IBM products and services is very rewarding to work with.They are so insightful and thoughtful, to say naught of clever!

Incentivized

• Because of microservices, Kubernetes makes it easy to find the cost of each application easily.
• Like every new technology, initially, it took more resources to educate ourselves but over a period of time, I believe it's going to be worth it.

Incentivized