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https://media.trustradius.com/product-logos/Uv/Xp/77N37PEPH17Z-180x180.PNGIBM K8 made our batch processing great, again!We are migrating our current application from IBM Cloud Foundry to Kubernetes. We grew out of CF and needed more compute power, therefore we turned to Kubernetes. Currently, we are using it as the primary architecture for our UI and a few of our complex processing processes (pseudo batch processing). We are implementing it for this one client, but we have other clients on Kubernetes on other cloud platforms. The application that it is running supports 300 million dollars in business for this company. The solution is only for a single subset of a larger department. Many pieces of the application are still in Cloud Foundry; we are still in the process of migrating.,It scales really well Depending on how you measure, it is cheaper and more powerful than Cloud Foundry Deployments are fast, comparably.,It is very unreliable. We have seen nodes and machines randomly go down without warning or helpful error messages. Documentation is not great. The autoscale and documentation on autoscale are not good. We had to write/re-write our own and as a result; we found a lot of issues that caused problems.,3,Batch processes that used to take hours, we brought down to minutes or an hour. We have found it to be more buggy or less stable than other cloud offerings. Lack of documentation has been challenging. Lack of positive experience might lead us to recommend a different cloud provider.,Google Kubernetes Engine, IBM Cloud Foundry and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2),IBM Cloud Foundry, IBM Cloud Functions, IBM Sametime, IBM Notes, IBM Watson Studio (formerly IBM Data Science Experience), IBM Watson Analytics, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), IBM Cloud Object Storage, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)Room to improveIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service supports the core of our organization. It has solved the problem of being cloud agnostic for most of what we use Kubernetes Services for.,It's Kubernetes,The underlying platform that is BlueMix needs work. You can get to dead ends in the GUI with no reference back to "home." Provisioning of underlying clusters is not automated. Removal of hardware is not intuitive.,5,Slow when compared to other cloud providers with Kubernetes. Proprietary IBM offerings led us down a dead-end with product development and resource allocation.,,IBM Blockchain Platformk8s features at IBM CloudWe use Kubernetes in a production environment to stream millions of events per second with real-time data ingestion apps. Kubernetes has an acceptable learning curve and allows us to manage all our microservice containers.,Highly scalable Great documentation Makes it a lot easier to establish effective CI/CD pipelines,If you have Lite account you can't create service with LoadBalancer, only NodePort is available Long waiting times to deploy the service,9,IBM gave us $200. If you are a new user - you can try Kubernetes for no cost. Control your pods easily,IBM Cloud Private,Kubernetes, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, IBM API ManagementFrom IBM Cloud Foundry userMainly we are using IBM Cloud Foundry as a service platform but some readily available installations (for example Artifactory) are installed on Kubernetes service.,Service monitoring Command line tooling (ibmcloud ks),Don't have suggestions yet,8,Positive: easy to start using Negative: hard to manage and management overhead vs. Cloud Foundry,IBM Cloud Kubernetes - Great choice for both small and large businesses!We host our application running on a CentOS container on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. We have been using the service since IBM Cloud originally launched. We appreciated the flexibility and scalability that IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provide us. Since we are quite small, the Kubernetes service is only used currently within my project group.,Great flexibility Worker node management Awesome support,Difficult to master fast Sometimes buggy Container gets reset from time to time,9,Monitor apps easily Lower cost for hosting Good user environment,The CLI and API have been developed rapidly and we find it annoying to change logics in our deploying script all the time. IBM Cloud Kubernetes provides good documentation and it is relatively easy to pick up updates and new APIs as well as digging out which one is deprecated. Overall, we think it adds a little bit of hassle in cluster management due to this fact.,Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2),Docker, Vagrant, Google Cloud AIRely on K8sWe are using the IBM K8s Service to handle user-submitted private data. K8s can be used to better distribute workloads. IBM Kubernetes Service has been chosen for processing speed and for a faster network. Deploying is more convenient than with a VM, but it does not have the stability of a traditional VM.,Performance is sufficient. A smooth network. Web interface included. Kubernetes!,Not very stable. Price. Deployment speed.,9,Almost none,Web interface, CLI, and API are easier to use, but sometimes cluster management will run into problems, such as could not create, but these are rarely used and the services in operation are not affected. The real-time price calculator is an advantage.,,IBM Cloud Container RegistryGood place to start using KubernetesWe use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service in order to get high availability in some simple web applications that are relevant to our daily work. This is a challenge to my organization because we don't have enough human and computational resources to spend in order to create and support a more advanced set up with those services.,The tutorials are detailed and easy to follow. The applications are easy to support and manage. IBM's interface shows important information properly. It takes lees than 1 hour to get a working Kubernetes cluster!,Some parts of the tutorials need to be upgraded. Knowledge of IBM console and configuration may be needed. IBM's interfaces interaction with logs and Kubernetes configuration could be upgraded.,8,It help us to have HA in some simple services. The support is easier than in other platforms and that gives. us time to pay attention to other more important systems We had to spend some time getting information about how to deal with IBM cloud services.,The GUI is really useful and is one of the reasons that make this platform different and competitive compared to other cloud providers. Some tutorials have information about the use of older versions.,Google Kubernetes Engine,AnsibleIBM Kubernetes is awesome!Using Kubernetes in our company allows us to manage multiple environments easily. In our company, we have two major products with three environments (dev, staging, and production). Kubernetes provides a concept of namespaces that allows us to isolates resources by environments. The best aspect with Kubernetes is the ability to use Docker in a secure and reliable way.,Isolate environments at low cost. Fault-tolerant. Full control on our resources.,Steep learning curve Can be tricky to setup sometime Monitoring is not completely set up at start,9,We can manage as many environments as we want without the cost of spinning up new compute instances to isolate them. Kubernetes' native applications such as Monitoring and Logging are included in the cluster. Then no need to install them in each application since it is the cluster that manages these parts. The negative aspect would be learning Kubernetes, since it is a recent technology. We had to take the time to learn some things in order to be able to set up everything correctly.,Google Kubernetes Engine,IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)A review by a current Kubernetes userWe use it to run CPU intensive workloads and UI websites.,Ease of use No need to install Bundles billing with other services,Is the billing still a minimum of one hour? Even if the worker only used it for 20 mins? Long start up time for the workers Slow UI,8,Before moving to kubernetes, we were not able to run CPU intensive workloads with ease. So, immediate positive ROI. We are able to scale our clusters up and down as needed, thereby saving money.,Google Kubernetes Engine and IBM Cloud Foundry,IBM Cloud Foundry, IBM Cloud FunctionsRich features with overall good performance and some minor consWe are using IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service in our DevOps department. It automates our whole process of software development. We also take advantage of the canary versions of our web applications.,Rich features. Easy GUI. IBM Cloud command-line interface.,Optimization of IBM Cloud command-line interface. Sometimes it takes more time to get a response. Further explanations are required in the documentation. Optimization of web page load.,8,It has helped us save time and use less manpower, which has led to us saving money. Automate development.,Our organization benefits from IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service with both the GUI, CLI, and API options. It makes our continuous integration processes much easier.,I haven't used Watson third-party services.,IBM Cloud Managed IstioIt does what it says it doesWe used this cloud provider in order to learn how to correctly use containers and to deploy some simple apps. Even though the complexity of the applications was low, we wanted to have high availability at a low cost and low technical difficulty.,It's pretty easy to use. Gives you multiple options of machines to use for your Kubernetes cluster. Has a nice variety of server regions.,You can't access your virtual machines in order to have more control of your cluster. The deployment of a cluster takes too long.,10,It has allowed us to spend time on more important things, instead of taking a lot of time configuring container clusters.Docker Containers deployed using Kubernetes ClusterIBM Cloud Kubernetes service helps us to create pods without managing the actual installation of Kubernetes. We can also have a secure environment in which we can implement a CI CD workflow for the Docker containers.,Deploying Wordpress-based applications. Deploying Jenkins web applications. CI CD deployment of Docker containers using custom source code.,Interface for using Kubernetes Service. Deployment support for Docker containers. Integration of Kubernetes with other DevOps tools.,9,It helps us to automate the deployment of Docker containers. It improves the quality of Containerized Applications. We can also monitor containers using the IBM Cloud.,IBM Cloud Private,IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose), IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, IBM Cloud FoundryIBM Cloud Kubernetes pros and consWe use the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service for the deployment of the blockchain application. We are doing research on how blockchain can be employed in real-world applications. We thought that cloud containers would be better for deploying blockchains and working on them. IBM's Kubernetes Service is pretty good but sometimes it suddenly sends an email saying that there was an unexpected issue and it'll be closed for some time.,Easy-to-use interface. Good for deploying web applications and pretty good performance. IBM Cloud Kubernetes offers built-in logging and monitoring tools. CPU utilization is a big factor in autoscaling.,Little harder to set up compared to Docker, but IBM made it a little easier. Breakdown of service may occur at any time, which leads to malfunction of applications. Service issues occur at unknown times which can make it hard to monitor.,7,Easy to use and configure in IBM's Cloud. Unfortunate service issues but not frequent. Aggressive price in my opinion. The perfect option for deploying web apps and testing blockchains.,Docker,DockerK8SIt resolved all the Cloud Foundry issues while deploying the unwired UI when updated to Meteor 1.8.,Scales really well Deploys fast Resolves Cloud Foundry issues,Goes down once in a while. Flipping between routes don't work so well at times.,7,Scaling is great so it helps with budgeting.,IBM Cloud Functions and IBM Cloud Foundry,IBM Cloud Foundry, IBM Cloud Functions, IBM SametimeIKSWe are working with IBM to list our product in the IBM Marketplace, so we are using IBM Kubernetes Service to deploy OpenServiceBroker and host it there so that we can integrate with the IBM catalog and Billing services.,Well integrated container registry Support for ingress controller and public domain name for service deployed on IKS Good UX,Provisioning time for worker nodes can come down. Integrating using programming languages like Go can be helpful, i.e improving the bluemix-sdk. Sometimes the web portal is too slow, needs improvement in service uptime.,7,No impact as of now on the ROI. IBM service seems to be on the expensive side when compared to other competitors. Sometime we need to wait an hour or more for a simple 3 node IKS cluster to spin up.,AWS LambdaWhy we run Kube in BlueMix.IBM Kubernetes Service is our one-stop for running all our Java services and NodeJs services. Currently, we are running 16 services inside our Kube cluster. It hosts and runs the application that collects the IOT information from our bots and stores it in IBM Cloudant.,Quick Updates, Highly Scalable. We keep adding nodes when needed. Never spent a minute on any maintenance activities for our Kube Cluster. Zero Downtimes in last 2 years.,Helm inventory is somewhat lacking. Little confusing when it comes to PVCs. Networking between our Kube Clusters and our other VMs is very difficult due to lack of documentation,9,This project does not bring any ROI directly. But there are other departments in the organization which are benefited by analyzing the IOT information collected by this service.,,IBM Cloudant, IBM Cloud Container Registry, IBM Event Streams (formerly Message Hub)Love the productWe use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service in our IoT Platform. Currently it isn't being used across different parts of the organization. In our IoT platform, we use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service to orchestrate about 200 micro services that are deployed on IBM Containers. Because of Kubernetes we no longer need to manage scaling and it's super easy to deploy the application.,Help to orchestrate the containers on with we have deployed our micro services Auto scaling It makes it super easy to deploy applications,Much better integration with the log analysis Make it easy to retrieve the logs and search through them,10,Cost saving in terms of manpower Faster time to market. It only take about 3 mins to deploy my applications Auto scalability,,IBM API Connect, DB2, IBM Cloudant, IBM Cloud Databases (formerly Compose)Kubernetes adoptionWe are using it for migrating work loads into the Cloud.,Gives the scale we need Bundled with Dev Ops it becomes easier to deploy and operate Gives us the portability across cloud providers,Dev Ops reference templates are not available for organizations to quickly adopt Organizations want to focus on developing business features but wanted a pipeline which takes the code all the way to deployment without much human intervention. Wanted to see quick set up of Kubernetes platform along with Dev Ops capabilities as Service.,10,Positive impacts : enables quick platform to replatform work loads Provides business agility Easier to add value incrementally once the work load is deployed to k8S,,WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere DataPower Gateway, WebSphere BPMSIBM product reviewWe used it for a POC of a mobile app back-end service during container technology evaluation.,Easy to setup Strong support Fully managed,Not easy to integrate with in-house tools Lack of prebuilt functionality Not easy to install,7,ROI Agile development Standardized implementation,Great container offer!We are using Kubernetes to manage our entire IoT backend services, globally. It’s a fairly complex implementation with performance and security requirements which IBM is fully delivering.,Highly configurable Resilient Secure,Pricing compared to competitors,10,Performance and reliability allow us to meet our consumer standards Running cost is still high Easy to configure makes deployment ease and helps not to increase TCO,,IBM Cloudant, Redis Cloud, DB2, SonarQube, AppDynamics, Crashlytics, Google AnalyticsUsing Bluemix as the IoT platform for our clientsWe are an IBM Bluemix implementation partner. We use our platform for proofs of concept, demos, and training, etc. So we are in the business for providing Bluemix solutioins for others, there are no business problems which Bluemix addressess internally at the moment or in the future, if you are not counting the license sales.,Rapid implementation for IoT platform Rapid implementation of a micro service environment Deep learning facilities available in the value stream,Surprisingly complex to implement some features, like port forwarding within the PaaS architecture without implementing IaaS layer features.,6,Difficult to assess at this point.,Cloudfoundry was not a factor in the decision.,6,Some use of containers in proofs of concepts,Never heard of it.,IBM Bluemix - A Paragidm Shift in Cloud ComputingWe use Bluemix internally and for our clients across entire organizations. Bluemix enhances the connectivity between different cloud services, so that data and code can be aggregated in one central place: The Bluemix Dashboard. While similar services exist in AWS and Azure, Bluemix makes the integration highly automated and reliable. Coders can self service their section of the Bluemix infrastructure without relying on cloud networking experts to do so. Database administrators can easily share and control access to data through IBM Data Connect across more than 20 industry standard databases, and though multi-cloud vendors.,Sends data from IBM Data Connect to Data Analytics in one click. Manages coding in the cloud IDE with continuous integration. Has tool chains which aggregate different services together into a complete process. Has a dashboard that is far more in-depth and intuitive than AWS or Azure.,Basics like DNS and routing can be challenging. Uptime is not at the same level as AWS. Phone support is not at the level of AWS.,10,Very cost effective and horizontally scalable serivces. More predictable than spinning up new virtual servers for expansion (Charged by API). Adaptation of all standards including Docker, MongoDB, Node-RED, allows leveraging of existing and Open Source code more reliably to reduce costs.,The underpinning of Cloud Foundry as the structure for Bluemix enabled IBM to stay compatible with other services. That was important to us. IBM to our knowledge is the biggest open source backer in the world based on the number of coders they have assigned to open source. They continue to innovate and embrace new technologies like Kubernetes.,10,We have entire third party platforms running in Docker within client Bluemix instances. Through connected Bluemix services, those Docker instances are much more integrated than they would be with the same Docker container in AWS or Azure. We are now testing Open Whisk which further reaches into Docker containers for event triggered coding in both directions... to and from Docker.,In testing phase now. Its highly integrated into our "API First" mentality, with another layer added by Open Whisk. Its reducing our need for SQL triggers and other code which would be buried in dense legacy systems. Open Whisk is allowing these triggers to be centralized and visible by all our coding staff for better integration and coding efficiency.,AWS, Azure and RackspaceTest and iterate with the cognitive features of WatsonBluemix is being used to create a platform for the delivery of electronic scheduling services. Bluemix gave us the ability to iterate on multiple initiatives and micro-services with limited resources.,Prepared environment - the preparation of the platform was easy for us to spin up Selection of services that we would implement. Limited need to search for varied sources,Our developers felt that the documentation was difficult to navigate. Time spent in the platform cleared the problem for the team.,7,As an emerging business we were able to leverage the low cost of assessing the tremendous capabilities of Bluemix. Our developers tried and implement Education technology at an accelerated pace. This saved us development dollars and research time.,8Bluemixed-bag of a review!All the micro-services that are running to keep our VoIP platform alive are deployed over Bluemix. It provides seamless integration with our deployment model and reduces much of the hassle involved in the deployment process. Compared to a privately hosted infrastructure, a cloud solution the likes of Bluemix provides more flexibility while reducing cash burn.,Automation Orchestration Deployment,User Experience Lack of a large worldwide availability zone options unlike competitions. Certain clutter,7,Reduced our burn rate exponentially. Orchestrated our services On-demand scaling opportunities. Automation,Most of the other Cloud Computing Platforms are closely tied to their cloud providers, but CloudFoundry has the option to be deployed and used from anywhere. Be it AWS, OpenStack servers or HP Helion. In BlueMix, CloudFoundry encapsulates the core of the infrastructure and simply lets you concentrate on the application and the services that you're building. This leads to improved productivity and you deploying your application within seconds.,8,Containerisation is essential to all organisations that embrace rich DevOps. With recently introducing Kubernetes to its container service, Bluemix is essentially state of the art in terms of micro-service orchestration. It let's your service be deployed into micro-services without any downtime and ease of scaling by replication and migration.,Not using OpenWhisk as of now. But looking forward to using it.,Amazon Web Services and Microsoft AzureBluemix and Watson, great choice for Enterprise AIWe use Bluemix primarily as a way to access IBM Watson's suite of AI APIs, for our own use as well as proposing as a solution for other companies. Watson is one of several AI options we can support with our chatbot AIs, and is especially suitable for issues where security is important and a local install may be required.,Local install options. Security. Often for large companies IBM is already on the network and it is an easier sell.,Kubernetes is comparatively new there, needs maturing. Getting your app available as a third party is a longish process, needs streamlining. Still some shifting around and renaming of elements of the Watson APIs that can throw off development, hopefully, all is now set.,8,Opened up a higher level of fintech clientele Allowed us to reach some critical foreign language markets via native language Watson support Partnering with IBM has given us a good amount of marketing exposure,We haven't spent much time with this feature yet, so difficult to weigh in.,10,Kubernetes is our tool of choice for container management, we use it heavily, although not primarily on Bluemix. It's a brilliant technology and underpins our whole infra.,GCP and AWS
  3. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Reviews
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IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
146 Ratings
Score 7.6 out of 101
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IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Reviews

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IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
146 Ratings
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Score 7.6 out of 101

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jonathan gough profile photo
May 24, 2019

IBM K8 made our batch processing great, again!

jonathan gough
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We are migrating our current application from IBM Cloud Foundry to Kubernetes. We grew out of CF and needed more compute power, therefore we turned to Kubernetes. Currently, we are using it as the primary architecture for our UI and a few of our complex processing processes (pseudo batch processing). We are implementing it for this one client, but we have other clients on Kubernetes on other cloud platforms. The application that it is running supports 300 million dollars in business for this company. The solution is only for a single subset of a larger department. Many pieces of the application are still in Cloud Foundry; we are still in the process of migrating.
  • It scales really well
  • Depending on how you measure, it is cheaper and more powerful than Cloud Foundry
  • Deployments are fast, comparably.
  • It is very unreliable. We have seen nodes and machines randomly go down without warning or helpful error messages.
  • Documentation is not great.
  • The autoscale and documentation on autoscale are not good. We had to write/re-write our own and as a result; we found a lot of issues that caused problems.
If you have a big budget to spend on IBM services and have a lot of services with IBM, yes. For the most part, it does handle heavy batch processes well. However, we have had issues with intermittent outages that have been very challenging. If you need to have redundancies built in and seamless cross-region support, it is a bit more challenging.
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Michael Doran profile photo
April 22, 2019

Room to improve

Michael Doran
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service supports the core of our organization. It has solved the problem of being cloud agnostic for most of what we use Kubernetes Services for.
  • It's Kubernetes
  • The underlying platform that is BlueMix needs work. You can get to dead ends in the GUI with no reference back to "home."
  • Provisioning of underlying clusters is not automated.
  • Removal of hardware is not intuitive.
Great if uptime and provisioning speeds are not a must. Not versatile enough to entertain using for a dynamically side scaled solution even with Knative. The slow provisioning time and human parser steps behind the scenes make using BlueMix a difficult endeavor. If things were a little more fault-tolerant and scalable, I think the platform would be great. For proof of concept, the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is great.
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Kevin Santacruz profile photo
August 05, 2019

k8s features at IBM Cloud

Kevin Santacruz
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Kubernetes in a production environment to stream millions of events per second with real-time data ingestion apps. Kubernetes has an acceptable learning curve and allows us to manage all our microservice containers.
  • Highly scalable
  • Great documentation
  • Makes it a lot easier to establish effective CI/CD pipelines
  • If you have Lite account you can't create service with LoadBalancer, only NodePort is available
  • Long waiting times to deploy the service
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is great if you want to control microservice architecture in production environments because IBM Cloud, brings us high availability, and strong support. [It is a] resilient and secure platform. You will have an interface for checking node status and logs for control issues in your systems. You can integrate easily with other IBM services.
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Henri Behm profile photo
May 09, 2019

From IBM Cloud Foundry user

Henri Behm
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Mainly we are using IBM Cloud Foundry as a service platform but some readily available installations (for example Artifactory) are installed on Kubernetes service.
  • Service monitoring
  • Command line tooling (ibmcloud ks)
  • Don't have suggestions yet
I have found it useful to run ready-made products in a docker environment. But I like more IBM Cloud Foundry for my own apps where the deployment and SpringBoot auto configuration is more straightforward.
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No photo available
June 03, 2019

IBM Cloud Kubernetes - Great choice for both small and large businesses!

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We host our application running on a CentOS container on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. We have been using the service since IBM Cloud originally launched. We appreciated the flexibility and scalability that IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provide us. Since we are quite small, the Kubernetes service is only used currently within my project group.
  • Great flexibility
  • Worker node management
  • Awesome support
  • Difficult to master fast
  • Sometimes buggy
  • Container gets reset from time to time
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is best for apps that need to scale and developers who want to deploy their software fast and easily. In our opinion, it is also good for cutting the cost. However, it cannot provide bare metal server performance like traditional servers, nor does it provide full native support in system and SSH.
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May 29, 2019

Rely on K8s

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We are using the IBM K8s Service to handle user-submitted private data. K8s can be used to better distribute workloads. IBM Kubernetes Service has been chosen for processing speed and for a faster network. Deploying is more convenient than with a VM, but it does not have the stability of a traditional VM.
  • Performance is sufficient.
  • A smooth network.
  • Web interface included.
  • Kubernetes!
  • Not very stable.
  • Price.
  • Deployment speed.
IBM Cloud Kubernetes is suited for K8s, but is not suitable for 'direct day or night.' For 'day or night with reserved processing,' it is suitable. Compared to Dynamic VM allocation, K8s is much easier, thanks to the stable K8s management node, although sometimes deploying clusters can be problematic. High-frequency container operations are very stable.
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No photo available
July 16, 2019

Good place to start using Kubernetes

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service in order to get high availability in some simple web applications that are relevant to our daily work. This is a challenge to my organization because we don't have enough human and computational resources to spend in order to create and support a more advanced set up with those services.
  • The tutorials are detailed and easy to follow.
  • The applications are easy to support and manage. IBM's interface shows important information properly.
  • It takes lees than 1 hour to get a working Kubernetes cluster!
  • Some parts of the tutorials need to be upgraded.
  • Knowledge of IBM console and configuration may be needed.
  • IBM's interfaces interaction with logs and Kubernetes configuration could be upgraded.
IBM Cloud Kubernetes is well suited if the application has an important role in your organization and you need to have any level of high availability. However, at the same time, you have more complex core-applications that need more time to deal with. If the application you are trying to configure is not very complex and you are not very familiar with Kubernetes, this is a good way to start.
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No photo available
March 21, 2019

IBM Kubernetes is awesome!

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Using Kubernetes in our company allows us to manage multiple environments easily. In our company, we have two major products with three environments (dev, staging, and production). Kubernetes provides a concept of namespaces that allows us to isolates resources by environments. The best aspect with Kubernetes is the ability to use Docker in a secure and reliable way.
  • Isolate environments at low cost.
  • Fault-tolerant.
  • Full control on our resources.
  • Steep learning curve
  • Can be tricky to setup sometime
  • Monitoring is not completely set up at start
IBM Cloud Kubernetes is well suited for companies with a microservices architecture. Kubernetes provides service mesh tool that is perfect for microservices. However, if you only have a monolithic application, I don't think Kubernetes is a better choice than a simple CloudFoundry setup. The main advantage of Kubernetes is the ease to split resources in multiple environments, and the ability to have granular control over anything.
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No photo available
July 02, 2019

A review by a current Kubernetes user

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use it to run CPU intensive workloads and UI websites.
  • Ease of use
  • No need to install
  • Bundles billing with other services
  • Is the billing still a minimum of one hour? Even if the worker only used it for 20 mins?
  • Long start up time for the workers
  • Slow UI
It is well suited for the applications that are already hosted in Bluemix.
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No photo available
June 03, 2019

Rich features with overall good performance and some minor cons

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We are using IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service in our DevOps department. It automates our whole process of software development. We also take advantage of the canary versions of our web applications.
  • Rich features.
  • Easy GUI.
  • IBM Cloud command-line interface.
  • Optimization of IBM Cloud command-line interface. Sometimes it takes more time to get a response.
  • Further explanations are required in the documentation.
  • Optimization of web page load.
My experience with IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service overall was a good one. There are many features to use. I gave the product 8 out of 10 stars because sometimes I felt that some pages and features take more time to load than Google's Kubernetes services by comparison. However, this does not mean that it took too long. This instead means that it took about 1 to 3 seconds longer than Google. I also felt that documentation is well organized, but it isn't always easy to understand. I found it easy to install Istio when compared to installing Istio on Google Cluster.
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No photo available
May 16, 2019

It does what it says it does

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We used this cloud provider in order to learn how to correctly use containers and to deploy some simple apps. Even though the complexity of the applications was low, we wanted to have high availability at a low cost and low technical difficulty.
  • It's pretty easy to use.
  • Gives you multiple options of machines to use for your Kubernetes cluster.
  • Has a nice variety of server regions.
  • You can't access your virtual machines in order to have more control of your cluster.
  • The deployment of a cluster takes too long.
If you want an easy solution for deploying containers, this is a very good option. However, if you want to have a lot more of control of your virtual cluster, then you should use a more general service, and not a service focused on Kubernetes.
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May 09, 2019

Docker Containers deployed using Kubernetes Cluster

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service helps us to create pods without managing the actual installation of Kubernetes. We can also have a secure environment in which we can implement a CI CD workflow for the Docker containers.
  • Deploying Wordpress-based applications.
  • Deploying Jenkins web applications.
  • CI CD deployment of Docker containers using custom source code.
  • Interface for using Kubernetes Service.
  • Deployment support for Docker containers.
  • Integration of Kubernetes with other DevOps tools.
It is well suited in the case of deployment of docker containers, which we put on a Kubernetes Cluster so that we can automate the deployment of Containerized applications.
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No photo available
May 06, 2019

IBM Cloud Kubernetes pros and cons

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service for the deployment of the blockchain application. We are doing research on how blockchain can be employed in real-world applications. We thought that cloud containers would be better for deploying blockchains and working on them. IBM's Kubernetes Service is pretty good but sometimes it suddenly sends an email saying that there was an unexpected issue and it'll be closed for some time.
  • Easy-to-use interface.
  • Good for deploying web applications and pretty good performance.
  • IBM Cloud Kubernetes offers built-in logging and monitoring tools.
  • CPU utilization is a big factor in autoscaling.
  • Little harder to set up compared to Docker, but IBM made it a little easier.
  • Breakdown of service may occur at any time, which leads to malfunction of applications.
  • Service issues occur at unknown times which can make it hard to monitor.
IBM Cloud Kubernetes has features that are great, as well as its own issues. It's pretty good with its performance and web applications can be deployed easily. We specifically used Kubernetes for deploying our blockchain and to see how a blockchain performs in a real-world application so that we can move to deploy a fully functioning blockchain application. The main problem we experienced is that the service shuts down sometimes. This issue occurs about 5-6 times in a month, but the system returns to normal very fast.
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April 22, 2019

K8S

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
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It resolved all the Cloud Foundry issues while deploying the unwired UI when updated to Meteor 1.8.
  • Scales really well
  • Deploys fast
  • Resolves Cloud Foundry issues
  • Goes down once in a while.
  • Flipping between routes don't work so well at times.
For better deployment and avoid issues with Cloud Foundry. Any lightweight apps like Python don't really need K8.
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April 19, 2019

IKS

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
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We are working with IBM to list our product in the IBM Marketplace, so we are using IBM Kubernetes Service to deploy OpenServiceBroker and host it there so that we can integrate with the IBM catalog and Billing services.
  • Well integrated container registry
  • Support for ingress controller and public domain name for service deployed on IKS
  • Good UX
  • Provisioning time for worker nodes can come down.
  • Integrating using programming languages like Go can be helpful, i.e improving the bluemix-sdk.
  • Sometimes the web portal is too slow, needs improvement in service uptime.
Having flexibility to use a bare-metal server as worker nodes.
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February 21, 2019

Why we run Kube in BlueMix.

Lokesh Venkatesan
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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IBM Kubernetes Service is our one-stop for running all our Java services and NodeJs services. Currently, we are running 16 services inside our Kube cluster. It hosts and runs the application that collects the IOT information from our bots and stores it in IBM Cloudant.
  • Quick Updates, Highly Scalable. We keep adding nodes when needed.
  • Never spent a minute on any maintenance activities for our Kube Cluster.
  • Zero Downtimes in last 2 years.
  • Helm inventory is somewhat lacking.
  • Little confusing when it comes to PVCs.
  • Networking between our Kube Clusters and our other VMs is very difficult due to lack of documentation
I recommended Kube on Bluemix (9 out 10) to a colleague. Having one Kube cluster on BlueMix is like having your own data center which is readily available to scale up on your needs.

Suitable for:
1) Running an application which is built on a microservice architecture.
2) Running NodeJs services, proxy services.

Not suitable:
1) For running DB engines.
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February 14, 2019

Love the product

Sudhanshu Nagar
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service in our IoT Platform. Currently it isn't being used across different parts of the organization. In our IoT platform, we use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service to orchestrate about 200 micro services that are deployed on IBM Containers. Because of Kubernetes we no longer need to manage scaling and it's super easy to deploy the application.
  • Help to orchestrate the containers on with we have deployed our micro services
  • Auto scaling
  • It makes it super easy to deploy applications
  • Much better integration with the log analysis
  • Make it easy to retrieve the logs and search through them
IBM Kubernetes Service is good for the applications that are born on the cloud i.e., the applications that are cloud native. There's quite a bit of time investment required to containerize the legacy applications and only then they they can be orchestrated using IBM Kubernetes Service. Currently the cost is prohibitive.
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February 15, 2019

Kubernetes adoption

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
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Verified User
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We are using it for migrating work loads into the Cloud.
  • Gives the scale we need
  • Bundled with Dev Ops it becomes easier to deploy and operate
  • Gives us the portability across cloud providers
  • Dev Ops reference templates are not available for organizations to quickly adopt
  • Organizations want to focus on developing business features but wanted a pipeline which takes the code all the way to deployment without much human intervention. Wanted to see quick set up of Kubernetes platform along with Dev Ops capabilities as Service.
Re-platform of on-perm work loads to modernize the middleware services as a first step to modernizations and continue to modernize the app layer using micro services to optimize resource utilization
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February 13, 2019

IBM product review

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
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We used it for a POC of a mobile app back-end service during container technology evaluation.
  • Easy to setup
  • Strong support
  • Fully managed
  • Not easy to integrate with in-house tools
  • Lack of prebuilt functionality
  • Not easy to install
For services that require high availability and rapid deployment
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February 13, 2019

Great container offer!

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We are using Kubernetes to manage our entire IoT backend services, globally. It’s a fairly complex implementation with performance and security requirements which IBM is fully delivering.
  • Highly configurable
  • Resilient
  • Secure
  • Pricing compared to competitors
Well suited: Cloud native applications, highly distributed systems.
Not well suited: legacy monolithic applications
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September 11, 2017

Using Bluemix as the IoT platform for our clients

Verified User
Score 6 out of 10
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We are an IBM Bluemix implementation partner. We use our platform for proofs of concept, demos, and training, etc. So we are in the business for providing Bluemix solutioins for others, there are no business problems which Bluemix addressess internally at the moment or in the future, if you are not counting the license sales.
  • Rapid implementation for IoT platform
  • Rapid implementation of a micro service environment
  • Deep learning facilities available in the value stream
  • Surprisingly complex to implement some features, like port forwarding within the PaaS architecture without implementing IaaS layer features.
It's good for a quick PoC for an IoT setup with hundreds/thousands of sensor points that need to be provisioned. It is also good for building full stack web architectures with micro services and mobile front ends etc. Not very well suited in current state for complex back end solutions requiring network operations/analysis in the core service built.
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June 23, 2017

IBM Bluemix - A Paragidm Shift in Cloud Computing

Paul Levy
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
Review Source
We use Bluemix internally and for our clients across entire organizations. Bluemix enhances the connectivity between different cloud services, so that data and code can be aggregated in one central place: The Bluemix Dashboard. While similar services exist in AWS and Azure, Bluemix makes the integration highly automated and reliable. Coders can self service their section of the Bluemix infrastructure without relying on cloud networking experts to do so. Database administrators can easily share and control access to data through IBM Data Connect across more than 20 industry standard databases, and though multi-cloud vendors.
  • Sends data from IBM Data Connect to Data Analytics in one click.
  • Manages coding in the cloud IDE with continuous integration.
  • Has tool chains which aggregate different services together into a complete process.
  • Has a dashboard that is far more in-depth and intuitive than AWS or Azure.
  • Basics like DNS and routing can be challenging.
  • Uptime is not at the same level as AWS.
  • Phone support is not at the level of AWS.
  • Absolutely for prototyping.
  • Ideal for inter-company data exchanges.
  • Great for shared managed coding by dispersed teams.
  • Excellent suite of starter code.
  • Excellent AI integration via Watson, Node-Red including for IOT.
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July 21, 2017

Test and iterate with the cognitive features of Watson

Damani Best
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
Bluemix is being used to create a platform for the delivery of electronic scheduling services.
Bluemix gave us the ability to iterate on multiple initiatives and micro-services with limited resources.
  • Prepared environment - the preparation of the platform was easy for us to spin up
  • Selection of services that we would implement. Limited need to search for varied sources
  • Our developers felt that the documentation was difficult to navigate. Time spent in the platform cleared the problem for the team.
Bluemix gave our team an opportunity to immediately begin building and testing solutions.
Our team built the forms and services they wanted in days without the need to manage a local environment and across geographical regions.
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July 19, 2017

Bluemixed-bag of a review!

Noble George
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
All the micro-services that are running to keep our VoIP platform alive are deployed over Bluemix. It provides seamless integration with our deployment model and reduces much of the hassle involved in the deployment process. Compared to a privately hosted infrastructure, a cloud solution the likes of Bluemix provides more flexibility while reducing cash burn.
  • Automation
  • Orchestration
  • Deployment
  • User Experience
  • Lack of a large worldwide availability zone options unlike competitions.
  • Certain clutter
If you're working on a new product and intents to design the same in a micro-services model, Bluemix is the goto option. It requires certain experience and training to get proficient with the tool but it's newbie friendly at the same time. Join us in using BlueMix as you major infrastructure provider
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June 26, 2017

Bluemix and Watson, great choice for Enterprise AI

Gary Theis
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source
We use Bluemix primarily as a way to access IBM Watson's suite of AI APIs, for our own use as well as proposing as a solution for other companies. Watson is one of several AI options we can support with our chatbot AIs, and is especially suitable for issues where security is important and a local install may be required.
  • Local install options.
  • Security.
  • Often for large companies IBM is already on the network and it is an easier sell.
  • Kubernetes is comparatively new there, needs maturing.
  • Getting your app available as a third party is a longish process, needs streamlining.
  • Still some shifting around and renaming of elements of the Watson APIs that can throw off development, hopefully, all is now set.
Enterprise installs and customers who already run IBM solutions are great use cases. I'd love to see more variety in native language Watson NLP support, but that's an industry issue.
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IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (146)
7.6

About IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a managed Kubernetes offering to deliver powerful tools, an intuitive user experience 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. Visit the vendor's Docs pages for pricing and support information.
Categories:  Container Management

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Video

Advantages of Managed Kubernetes

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Integrations

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Competitors

Google Kubernetes Engine, Azure Kubernetes Service, Amazon EKS

Pricing

Does not have featureFree Trial Available?No
Has featureFree or Freemium Version Available?Yes
Has featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?Yes
Entry-level set up fee?Optional

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Customer Size Distribution

Consumers
0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
0%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)
50%
Enterprises (> 500 employees)
50%

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Support Options

 Free VersionPaid Version
Phone
Live Chat
FAQ/Knowledgebase
Social Media
Video Tutorials / Webinar
Slack Channel to Development Team

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Technical Details

Deployment Types:SaaS
Operating Systems: Unspecified
Mobile Application:No
Supported Countries:https://console.bluemix.net/docs/containers/cs_regions.html#regions-and-zones
Supported Languages: A managed Kubernetes offering to deliver powerful tools, an intuitive user experience and built-in security for rapid delivery of applications that you 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 to design your own cluster, and integrated operational tools for consistency in deployment. Visit our Docs pages for pricing and support information.