Knowledge orchestrator IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service platform
We needed to find a reliable and scalable way to deploy secure and standalone instances for our cloud SaaS product. We chose IBM Cloud …
Overview
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…
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How IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Differs From Its Competitors
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Popular Features
- Container Orchestration (14)8.282%
- Cluster Management (14)7.777%
- Security and Isolation (14)7.575%
- Storage Management (14)7.575%
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Knowledge Orchestrator (Information Technology & Services, 1-10 employees)
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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…
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- Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://cloud.ibm.com/kubernetes/catalo…
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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.
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Integrations
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Competitors
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| 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. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Google Kubernetes Engine, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) are common alternatives for IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.
Reviewers rate Container Orchestration highest, with a score of 8.2.
The most common users of IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Customer Size Distribution
| Consumers | 0% |
|---|---|
| Small Businesses (1-50 employees) | 0% |
| Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees) | 50% |
| Enterprises (more than 500 employees) | 50% |
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Reviews and Ratings
(317)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 28)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 18, 2024
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
As a container management platform, I use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service to deploy and manage containerized applications on the cloud. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service allows me to package software code, along with all dependencies, so it can run reliably on any system. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service helps me to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
- Simplified cluster management
- Security and isolation
- Scalability
- Setting up an IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster can be complex and involve managing different components.
- The learning curve can be a bit steep for new users.
- Managing resources can sometimes be a challenge.
September 05, 2023
Cost effective and easy to provision and manage
Our container infrastructure runs on IBM IKS which is a complete application layer with a tech stack of ruby on rails, javascript, GraphQL, and node applications, and hosts an in-memory Redis cluster for caching layer use. IBM provides pure Kubernetes(no touch-ups), which allows us to use the system easily with compatibilites.
- automatic load balancer service
- out of the box compatibilities
- easy to provision clusters via terraform and UI
- namespace container registry compatibilites
- IKS version upgrade with terraform with zero down time - no documentation
- Interactive IKS documentation help while deploying using UI - steps
February 08, 2023
IBM Kubernetes is good
The use cases for IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service include deployment and management of cloud-native applications, microservices, and containerized applications.
For our use case, The business problems addressed by IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service include:
For our use case, The business problems addressed by IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service include:
- The complexity of managing large-scale applications
- Increased time and resources required for infrastructure management
- Inefficient application deployment and scaling
- Ensuring consistency in application environments
- Manages Kubernetes deployments with ease
- Spin up pods really fast
- good access control to share limited levels of access
- Installation fails during container creation due to a Docker 18.03.1 issue
- If you roll back to version 3.2.0 from a fix pack version, the version file can still show the fix pack version
- If you roll back to version 3.2.0 from a fix pack version, the Status column on the Helm releases page in the console might not show the status properly for some Helm releases
January 09, 2023
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Review for Microservices Use Case
I use IKS for container orchestration for Docker based micro services in product portfolio. The product is a micro-service that uses IKS in multiple data centers having up to 18 nodes. From communication perspective, we use internal (within IKS) as well as external communication (through Ingress/Egress). The deployment model is automated. We use multiple technologies for IKS based microservices for our workloades but most content is based on JVM or JVM based languages. <br><br>We have traffic that goes beyound XXm / Hr and it's exposed to external live customers.
- IKS is simple and has almost all aspects configurable to match our workloads.
- IKS resources and upgrades of those resources are managed seamlessly allowing the developers to focus on application rather than IKS management itself.
- There are multiple monitoring solutions within IKS to monitor the health of the cluster in best possible way. Many other services within IBM Cloud also integrate with IKS to provide best possible solution as per the use case at hand.
- Requesting the additional resources (SRE) or de-allocating is especially easy.
- IKS support is extremely active in answering the queries or any help needed in general.
- IBM Cloud has access to all resources my account uses. IBM Cloud / IKS has auto updates/upgrades for which reminders / alerts are sent to all account admins. I would prefer alerts being passed on to me for only the services I'm using in account. I think IBM Cloud already does it - but it would be great to fine tune it.
- If possible keep upgrades/updates frequent - but small in size and impact.
- Sometimes I have seen IKS dashboard appearing much slowly than other times.
December 02, 2022
The Great Power of Kube on IBM Cloud
My team and I utilizes this service to deploy our core IAAS services to host platform services as well as core infrastructure services that provide customers with access to computer, network, and storage resources. Kubernetes is used as the main orchestration layer for our services through the use of ingresses, Kubernetes DNS service, and various K8s resource types such as deployments, stateful sets and daemon sets. Additionally, Etcd is used to maintain the life cycle and state of customer resources such as virtual machines, vpcs, subnets, volumes, etc ...
- Provide an underlying infrastructure layer for cloud services and a means for them to easily communicate with one another via apis
- Provide a means to manage the lifecycle of events through Etcd to reach desired states for cloud resources
- Provide a means to easily rollback and upgrade services with no downtime
- Providing a means to deploy services across Kubernetes clusters (multi-region)
- Easily monitor services without external services (my team is currently using sysdig)
- CLI needs to be more easily usable and have more short cuts to make commonly done tasks more easily accessible without typing much
- Better online video demos of how to perform tasks in the Service
January 14, 2022
Good container orchestration platform from IBM
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is being used by a department. We run different backend microservices in it to serve our consumers. It is adopted to ease the management of containers in the cloud. Since it's a managed service, we don't need to spend much effort from an operation perspective.
- Support different regions and zones
- Easy for provisioning
- Easy to scale
- Monitoring has room for improvement.
- Cluster identity with random IDs are difficult to memorize.
December 07, 2021
Scaling applications and creating new businesses
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service removed the requirement to make application-specific configurations for each server and enabled engineers to iterate faster, knowing that what is shipped and runs in production is exactly what they built and tested. No more going through many steps of cloning multiple repos, pulling configurations, and installing lots of components locally. It greatly increased the infrastructure and the speed to launch new products and features into the marketplace.
- Quickly scaled our infrastructure[.]
- Streamlined application release process[.]
- The environment is now standardized to allow to quickly transition to different projects[.]
- Since it's very powerful it can be an overkill for applications that do not require a distributed architecture[.]
- It can be difficult to migrate applications to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, and at times the entire architecture has to be refactored[.]
December 06, 2021
It enabled an immutable infrastructure and now we can ship our features faster than before
We adopted IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service for container orchestration and we migrated our entire infrastructure to Kubernetes, starting with our website applications and concluding with the backend of the operations. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service unlocked our confidence in being able to deploy quickly, learn, and even at times when we make a mistake, we can roll it back without any issue. After implementing this system we quickly started to realize the benefit of having seamless upgrades and easy rollbacks without any issue and now we can experiment with existing applications and create new services blazingly fast.
- It lets developers work in the same environment that the application will be running in production
- It made it easier to test, easier to refine, and easier to deploy
- Helped engineers embrace the DevOps mindset as they built software
- The language to define containers is initially hard to understand
May 17, 2021
Best Kubernetes Tool in town
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is utilized by our startup to host our application. It allows us to scale up easily our applications and is cost-effective.
- Easy and fast deployment
- Reliability
- Cost effective
- Expensive
- Bad Logging
- Not available in all regions
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
We elected to use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service because of the excellent support for blockchain (hyperledger). The fact that we could containerized master nodes and move the chain outside of IBM cloud services when that time arrived. As well, the presence and availability of IBM consulting services enabled us to feel confident that we would never the stuck at sea.
- Blockchain Abilities
- Brand Trust
- Impressive GUI/appearance
- AWS-Parity
June 08, 2020
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Review
We use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service for research purposes. It is used by the whole Cloud services research team. It allows us to scale up easily our applications and to set up autoscale mechanisms when a condition is verified. We use IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service because it is really cost-effective and permits a precise billing based on the used resources.
- Cost effective
- Horizontal Scaling
- Microservice Approach
- Containerization
- Overkill for simple applications
- Learning curve slow
- Not all software are native compatible
April 09, 2020
IBM Kubernetes Review
We are using it for proof of concept for microservices using Kubernetes and Docker engine.
- Simple.
- Scalable.
- Reliable.
- Not available in all regions.
- Setting up cluster takes time.
March 03, 2020
Newbies in IBM cloud after disappointed at GCP
Yes. We're trying to deploy cloud services on IBM Cloud Kubernetes. It's intended to improve productivity of my staff. However, according to my employees, the descriptions are rather difficult to understand. Sometimes they get confused about specific functions. They know how to run it, if they can find how to initialize the configurations.
- The network is rather reliable, which greatly satisfies our customer.
- High performance equals time saved
- Affordable. We believe it's an acceptable price.
- Complicated description - it's not easy to initialize the settings.
- Limited privileges - Kubernetes offer limited functions. It seems root authorization is not provided.
- Port forwarding can't be set after deploying the docker. Maybe we just haven't found how to change it.
February 26, 2020
Enhance your ISTIO service mesh with IBM CKS
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is part of our testing environment for multi-cloud projects. By using ISTIO mesh to span to multiple Kubernetes clusters across multiple cloud providers, we can test the HA capabilities of the deployments and offer high HA solutions to our customers.
Also, by integrating IBM CKS to Google Cloud using Google Anthos GKE Connect, we can manage all our deployments in one place. IBM CKS offers one of the most powerful Kubernetes services: stable, powerful, easy to use and HIGH availability.
Also, by integrating IBM CKS to Google Cloud using Google Anthos GKE Connect, we can manage all our deployments in one place. IBM CKS offers one of the most powerful Kubernetes services: stable, powerful, easy to use and HIGH availability.
- Easy to use and configure
- ISTIO and KNATIVE installation by just clicking one button.
- Use of CONTAINERD (CRI-O)
- Choose the OS of the nodes
I'm using IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service to implement a solution with the IBM Blockchain Platform. Our product is around Blockchain, but nobody can use the Kubernetes Service. I'm the only one who can manage it. The only problem I have is its capacity. Now, I'm checking out how to upgrade each machine instead of adding more.
- Easy to use
- Not very expensive
- More documentation
- Capacity to upgrade easily
December 06, 2019
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Detailed Review
We are developing a blockchain application for a healthcare-related product. We are using the IBM blockchain platform with the Kubernetes cluster to deploy our network as well as to expose our node application
- Security is the key feature which our client expects to maintain across the application.
- Built-in IP address provision so that we do not need to get an external IP.
- External service connection ease.
- Built-in volume management to store our keys.
- IP addresses are expensive as compared.
- Logging is not up to the mark.
- Not highly available in all countries, we need to use other region clusters.
- Downtime on many occasions.
November 21, 2019
Impressed with IBM Cloud Kubernetes in a workshop.
I attended a workshop on Kubernetes, specifically focusing on Istio. The service seems quite solid. IBM's special add-ons to Kubernetes, especially Watson, are what sets it apart from Amazon Webservices (AWS) or Google Compute Engine (GCE). While my experience is quite limited, the workshop showed me that it's a solid product, worth considering when choosing where to run Kubernetes.
- Watson
- Scaling
- Base Kubernetes Functions
- Pricing clarity
July 16, 2019
Good place to start using Kubernetes
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.
July 02, 2019
A review by a current Kubernetes user
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
May 06, 2019
IBM Cloud Kubernetes pros and cons
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.
April 19, 2019
IKS
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.
March 22, 2019
IBM 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
February 21, 2019
Why we run Kube in IBM Cloud.
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
February 15, 2019
Kubernetes adoption
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.