IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Score8 out of 10

322 Reviews and Ratings

What is IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service?

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 service also has advanced capabilities around simplified cluster management, container security and isolation policies, the ability for users to design their own cluster, and integrated operational tools for consistency in deployment.

Categories & Use Cases

Container Management

Container Orchestration
The product’s ability to automate networking, deployment, scaling, and other container management functions.
Category average: 8.2
Self-Healing and Recovery
Product can be configured to automatically restart, replace, reschedule, kill, and validate jobs, containers, nodes, or clusters.
Category average: 8.3
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging
Product provides tools to manage performance, health, and other data related to containers or clusters. This could include analytics tools, logging tools, live dashboards, etc.
Category average: 8.3

Cluster Management
Product’s ability to centralize the management of multiple container or node clusters.
Category average: 8.2
Discovery Tools
Product provides methods (such as URIs or sortable lists) to easily find and access jobs, nodes, containers, or clusters.
Category average: 8.2
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks
Product provides tools or functionality to deliver updates to containerized applications in ways that minimize the impact of errors, and revert updates that cause problems.
Category average: 7.9

Most Frequent Users

Top 3 industries using IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.

Based on HG Insights installation data

View all Reviews

#1 most frequent

Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services

54.5%

12 installations of 22

#2 most frequent

Finance and Insurance

13.6%

3 installations of 22

#3 most frequent

Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services

4.5%

1 installation of 22

Pros

Robust support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments
Seamless integration with other IBM Cloud services (e.g., databases, security)
User-friendly interface and straightforward navigation

Cons

Limited configuration options (e.g., inability to pause clusters, networking choices)
Reported performance issues including general slowness and lag
Cost structure concerns; pricing could be more competitive or offer lighter options

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is the runtime environment for the application my organization provides respectively sells to customers. To be able to do this, we use a k8s operator which offers a number of advantages (operation/scalability/infrastructure as code) compared to a virtual machine setup. Therefore the decision was made to use Kubernetes respectively IBMs IKS in their virtual private cloud offering.

Pros

Offering a useful pre-configurated baseline
For example offering an IBM managed ingressClass (k8s nginx, in the future traefik)
Services as key protect (for encryption at rest), block storage etc. integrate seamlessly
Providing a tool landscape that als integrates well and giving you most you need to start

Cons

The possibilty to configure details is limited e.g. Azure offers the option to pause clusters or having auto updates regarding the version etc.
Autoscaler wise, IBM has a solution but to my understanding that is also limited is not comparable to for example Karpenter (available for azure)
Or another example, networkwise calico is available but no cilium etc.
The whole thing is not lightwith (features that come with the IKS) respecively you cannot select a lite version (so if you do not needed this is a drawback)
In addition to this point, it takes some time (~45 min) until your IKS cluster is ready to use
Not IKS specific, but the amount of datacenters/locations is limited too
The price politics, do not offer advanced possibilities to book a service for several years and save money

Return on Investment

In general K8s eases operation at scale (together with using their tool landescape offering) and IKS is no different here
No need to take care of self "managed" ingress class is a cost/time gain
The complexity of K8s is in the beginning no immediate gain but depending on you use-case if can be worth it

Alternatives Considered

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Other Software Used

GitLab, IBM Cloud Certificate Manager

Larry Gong View profile

Electronics technician in Information Technology at Parsons (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It allows me to collaberate and work with other colleagues in other departments. it allows me to share files, data and other important items with teammates.

Pros

fast connection
easy navigation
simple functionality

Cons

connection would be quicker
pop up tutorial would be helpful

Return on Investment

it makes getting done quick and easy
good for productivity and working with colleagues easy
great program to use

Andres Arroyo View profile

Sw architect in Professional Services at Gbm (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In microservices. To modernization of my apps. Easy to deploy apps and the cluster. The product is very useful. But you need understand the containers and the network. The Kubernetes is very useful in apps cloud native. Is fast and the upgrade is easy. I always recommend the product because is easy

Pros

Cloud native apps
modernization
containers

Cons

Refactoring
New apps
Culture in the company

Return on Investment

Culture
training
Work team

Alternatives Considered

Alepo Operation Support System (OSS), Conversion Support and Easy Event Tickets

Other Software Used

5iQ Workshop Software, AEB Logistics & Supply Chain, Algonomy Merchandising and Supplier Collaboration

Narender Singh

Cloud Delivery Engineer in Information Technology at GlassHouse Systems (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We’re a consulting company and an IBM Platinum Business Partner. We help customers migrate their workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud — whether those are Power workloads like IBM i or AIX, or other types of workloads as well.

Pros

We have some customers where we migrated their Power Systems to IBM Cloud — specifically IBM i or AIX on IBM Power — along with some x86 workloads as well. So basically, these customers were spending a lot more money and struggling to maintain or refresh their workloads on their on-prem sites. But now, since we’ve moved them to the cloud, their hosting costs have gone down, and they’re really very happy.

Cons

I would say there are still some areas for improvement in the IBM Support solutions — especially in how IBM Support handles IBM Cloud.
The IBM Cloud portfolio is growing every day, so there are also some integration challenges. As an IBM Champion, I’ve been pushing these ideas and feedback to IBM through their Aha portal.

Return on Investment

It basically increased our ROI — and our customers’ disaster recovery capabilities have also improved, so they’re really excited about that.

Luis Abatista View profile

Delivery Manager Middleware & Automation (Technology Integration) in Information Technology at Indra (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Built on the open source Kubernetes, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provides an efficient container orchestration solution that helps to easily manage containerized workloads. The platform handles much of the three key features of the deployment complexity, including automation, capacity, and failure protection, as well as the rolling updates.

Pros

Identity and access management solutions, integrated into their infrastructure.
It also caters for the multiple cloud environments, otherwise known as a hybrid solution setting.
Another interesting feature is that it has seamless compatibility with other IBM cloud services such as databases and networking

Cons

User Interface Needs Improvement
Log Management Complexity
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a very significant resource in terms of resource requirements

Return on Investment

The automatic healing properties of the platform, have been helpful in minimizing incidents during production as traditional human errors prevalent with deployments are eliminated.
The dynamic scaling features that have really benefited have been to optimize the infrastructure's costs since resources are provided based on the capacity that is actually required and not the maximum.
Using containerization with IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service has helped streamline the processes of deployment and development and has allowed for the release of features more frequently.

Alternatives Considered

Google Cloud Run and Kubernetes

Other Software Used

Cisco AnyConnect, Veeam Data Platform, Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365

Google Kubernetes Engine

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

What is IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service?

Categories & Use Cases