Percona Kubernetes Operators vs. SUSE Rancher

Production ready, robust DB solution built for Kubernetes envs, we was able, for the first time, to ship production db workloads inside k8s. Be sure to check differences with "traditional" MySQL and other clustering solutions. Also be sure to match it with proper k8s storage solutions.

SUSE Rancher as a management tool becomes useful on a larger scale. Small deployments not so much. If someone also requires Kubernetes capacity or storage, Rancher is an excellent choice. Also, without Kubernetes' skills, it is unlikely that Rancher deployment is going to be a success. Then again if someone else is managing your Kubernetes capacity, setting up the software's capacity will yield greater control. Rancher is not a very integrated solution similar to others in the market.

Incentivized

• Easy and fast deployment.
• A reliable, fully automated, high-available db lifecycle management solution.
• Exaustive documentation.
• Production ready.

• Public and private cloud infrastructure providers based on K8s CAPI
• REST API that can be used to integrate company services with Rancher
• GUI that is easy to learn and use in daily operations
• Builtin GitOps automation solution based on Fleet project
• It is fully open source

• Some differences compared to "traditional" MySQL solution.
• Had some hard times trying to use it combined with pre-existing techs like WordPress, Magento, etc.
• The specific k8s environment features can have an impact on it, like the storage solutions offered by the cloud vendor.

• No possibility to snapshot Projects. You can snapshot and restore the whole Kubernetes cluster, but not a Project or Namespace. For this, you have to use external tools.
• You cannot detach the Rancher-created Kubernetes clusters from Rancher management.

Easy and fast deployment. A reliable, fully automated, high-available db lifecycle management solution. It requires a bit of learning time for people new to operators ecosystem.

Overall it deserves an 8 out of 10. The platform is very easy to use as long as the UI is stable. We have had a few buggy versions in the past. However the CLI is excellent and the platform is simple to manage and maintain. It is easy to deploy and offer for company wide use which increases utilization and ROI.

Incentivized

Well documented, there was no need to contact support.

The documentation is quite complete and there is a very active community that is willing to collaborate and answer questions for those who are just starting out.

For a long time we struggled finding a viable solution to migrate our existing db workloads inside Kubernetes. Before "operators era" proper db workloads required manual management, of course that easily raised administrative overhead. Then the future started to be brighter with the introduction of operators and the "official" Oracle's MySQL Operator, then Presslab's one, finally Percona's operator. Compared to other operators, the last one allowed us to ship production db workloads inside k8s.

We started using SUSE Rancher in the early days and spent a large amount of time getting to know and love it. This was before the days of some of the likes of Amazon Web Services who may now provide a cheaper but less feature-rich alternative to SUSE Rancher, however we have yet to explore this.

Incentivized

The investment for small environments is quite significant. There has to be a compelling case to enhance the areas where SUSE Rancher brings in value to make such a financial leap. There is also a free version to test the value propositions, which will help support the user's buying decisions. More clusters, more volume, more tasks and more complexity in the environment equals more value that Rancher can provide.

Incentivized

• It allowed us to use k8s on our entire infrastructure.
• Decreased administrative overhead around our db services.
• As it is an open source technology, it cut down our db pricings.

• Shortens "Time-to-Market" factor for new business applications or implementing new functionalities. From 1 to 50 microservices-based business applications in 6 years.
• 24/7 availability, generates more money. There are many infrastructure components that are regularly powered-off for maintenance or upgrade, bur we rarely are turning off our downstream Kubernetes clusters where our business applications lives.
• Single Point of Contact with platform maintenance and development Team, eases implementation of new business applications