IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service vs. Linux Containers LXD vs. Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Score 7.9 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a managed Kubernetes offering, delivering user tools and built-in security for rapid delivery of applications that users can bind to cloud services related to IBM Watson®, IoT, DevOps and data analytics. As a certified K8s provider, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provides intelligent scheduling, self-healing, horizontal scaling, service discovery and load balancing, automated rollouts and rollbacks, and secret and configuration management. The Kubernetes…N/A
LXD
Score 9.9 out of 10
N/A
LXD is a system container and virtual machine manager. It offers a unified user experience around full Linux systems running inside containers or virtual machines. LXD is image based and provides images for a wide number of Linux distributions. It supports various use cases, with support for different storage backends and network types and the option to install on hardware ranging from an individual laptop or cloud instance to a full server rack. LXD is written in Go. It is free software…N/A
Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Score 6.1 out of 10
N/A
Red Hat Virtualization (formerly Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, broadly known as RHEV) is an enterprise level server and desktop virtualization solution. Red Hat Virtualization also contains the functionality of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktop in later editions of the platform.
$999
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Pricing
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceLinux Containers LXDRed Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Standard
$999.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Premium
$1,499.00
Per Year Per Hypervisor
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceLXDRed Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Free Trial
NoNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceLinux Containers LXDRed Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Features
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceLinux Containers LXDRed Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
8.0
20 Ratings
2% below category average
Linux Containers LXD
-
Ratings
Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Security and Isolation7.920 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Container Orchestration8.420 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Cluster Management7.720 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Storage Management7.820 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization8.120 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Discovery Tools7.719 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks7.820 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery8.318 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.120 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
-
Ratings
Linux Containers LXD
-
Ratings
Red Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
7.7
10 Ratings
4% below category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings00 Ratings7.910 Ratings
Management console00 Ratings00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings00 Ratings7.29 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings00 Ratings6.910 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings00 Ratings8.99 Ratings
Best Alternatives
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceLinux Containers LXDRed Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.0 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.0 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceLinux Containers LXDRed Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(85 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
6.6
(11 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(16 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.7
(16 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.7
(15 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.6
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Cloud Kubernetes ServiceLinux Containers LXDRed Hat Virtualization (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service also stands out in environments where the workloads vary continuously and require befitting scale. The product excels particularly in microservices structures, wherein the companies would harness the capacity for container orchestration and automated scaling. Still, it may face the challenges due to monolith applications that have not been originally developed for using container technology.
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Open Source
Linux Containers LXD works very well when you, as a software developer using Linux, need to spin up a development environment to build and work on a specific piece of software. For example, you need to build some software that is tested and developed target Ubuntu 18.04. You're able to quickly create a container for Ubuntu 18.04 and log into it to run commands and build your software. This is easier to do than setting a virtual machine - e.g - via Virtual Box, but is a lot clunkier than doing it via Docker containers which give you a much more flexible configuration of the environment and are easier to start, stop, connect and share with other developers.
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Discontinued Products
RHEV is well suited for organizations that need a cost-effective and flexible solution for their environment. As its vendor-independent software, easily install on any type of hardware. RHEV provides a GUI interface to manage the software, which makes the management of the software easier for the end-user. RHEV is best for non-production or less critical applications. RHEV can be easily integrated with other REDHAT software.
Read full review
Pros
IBM
  • IBM has a strong focus on serverless and Kubernetes. This shows in the platform. Deploying containers to Kubernetes was very easy.
  • Deploying a Kubernetes cluster through the GUI is very easy and quick. On top of that, IBM Cloud offers a single node cluster for Free.
  • Container Registry is a very good product for managing container images. Integration with Kubernetes was seemless.
  • Portability. To transition from Google Cloud Kubernetes to IBM Cloud Kubernetes took almost no effort. We mostly use the CLI and the standard tools such as kubectl were present.
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Open Source
  • GIT repositories.
  • Authentication servers.
  • Application instances.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • RHV issues/bugs can be reported via Bugzilla to RH support. The service is great and typically responds soon.
  • Red Hat distribution integration is seamless as it is integrated into the kernel.
  • OpenStack support enables more customized VM templates and network configuration control.
Read full review
Cons
IBM
  • I constantly get this error even when everything is well configured prefect.exceptions.AuthorizationError: [{'path': ['auth_info'], 'message': 'AuthenticationError: Forbidden', 'extensions': {'code': 'UNAUTHENTICATED'}}]
  • Then sometimes the error disapear without changine anything, happened twice to me. Should there be an issue with the authentication service? Please let's improve or let users know why this may be happening.
  • Improve the UX in the browse console when removing many images at once
  • UX on the process of installing KeyCloack operator
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Open Source
  • Ease of use.
  • Copying containers from one machine to another.
  • Creation of containers with config files similar to Docker.
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Discontinued Products
  • 1- RHVM API is pretty slow, especially after creating a VM it is not possible to retrieve the VM details (i.e VM's MAC Address) fast enough, where we need to place a pause in our Ansible Playbook, make the automation process slow.
  • 2- RHV is still using collected to monitor the hypervisors which is deviating from Red Hat policy for other RHEL based applications to use PCP to monitor, which is richer in features.
  • 3- It will be great if it is possible to patch the hypervisors using other tools such as satellite and not only via RHVM.
  • 4- In the past Red Hat used to present patches in the z release (i.e. 4.3.z), and features in the y release (i.e 4. y), but starting from 4.4 that is mixed together wherein the Z release you get both patches and features, that is not good because that requires a lot of time to test when we patch as it includes features as well.
  • 5- Engineering team has to be more reactive when new feature is requested.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
We have our application running on a CentOS compartment on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. We have been utilizing the help since IBM Cloud initially dispatched. We liked the adaptability and versatility that IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service give us. Since we are tiny, the Kubernetes administration is just utilized at present inside my venture bunch.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Usability
IBM
We actually haven't had any real problems in our clusters recently and the results we have gotten from adopting IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service have been beyond even our greatest expectations. The community has helped optimize the use of the system and make it relatively simpler to use.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
IBM
IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
Read full review
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Performance
IBM
IBM's cloud has a site in my conuntry (MEXICO) so the network latency was almost 0
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
IBM
The self-guided support was solid, and there are plenty of online videos to guide first time users, but I think one area of improvement is a faster way to transfer a large quantity of files from our local machine to the cloud for storage (Aspera)
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Online Training
IBM
Online training is really an important resource for using these tools. IBM's help center is rich in useful information and tips. Also, external guides and tutorials are available (e.g. on youtube), but I followed only IBM ones and I had no difficulties.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
IBM
Ease of use. Very intuitive. We have been looking for a product that allows us to orchestrate our docker containers in a way where it allows us to effectively scale our applications to production. It also provides us a way of monitoring all our infrastructure in a very clear concise way.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
IBM
We mainly selected [IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service] because IBM fabric blockchain service is mostly compatible with it. To have all the infrastructure in a single cloud to get the best output we selected the [IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service].
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Open Source
Linux Containers LXD feels like a more primitive version of docker, docker-compose and similar projects from the docker ecosystem. The Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml methods of specifying a container setup, as well as the network and file configurations afforded by Docker make working with containers much easier and more reproducible than with Linux Containers LXD.
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Discontinued Products
RHEV is an excellent product, includes more features, is less expensive, and has rock solid reliability and is backed with the best Red Hat Support in the industry. RHEV uses KVM under the hood which is used by all the big players in the industry (AWS, Rackspace, etc) to lower their overall costs and improve efficiency and profits and that's why RHEV is an excellent solution!
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Scalability
IBM
IBM's CKS does not offers automatic autoscaling nor vertical scaling (automatic). Other services like Google Kubernetes Engine scales up and down very well
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • Increased development speed and agility allows to build features faster and more economically.
  • Improved resource utilization helps keep applications running very efficiently, which saves on cloud service expenses.
  • Scalability and resilience allows for scaling up or down based on demand, which keeps applications running efficiently and more economically.
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Open Source
  • Save workload.
  • Save time.
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Discontinued Products
  • RHEV has provided a positive ROI as our customers are not experiencing as many outages during maintenances.
  • We have not experienced any catastrophic failures as a result of vsphere losing connection to the ntp.
  • There has been a level of stability in our environment that was not previously experienced with our previous vendor.
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