Ask HN: Why Is Kubernetes Coming Out on Top vs. Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm? - crankylinuxuser
======
GauntletWizard
Kubernetes is opinionated in ways that Mesos is not, and fits together
significantly better than Docker swarm does - And we're still only seeing the
tip of the kubernetes iceberg.

To put it bluntly, Kubernetes benefits from all of Google's borg expertise
while Mesos and Swarm are trying to reinvent the wheel, and there's a lot of
chesterton's fencing going on - They're adding and removing features without
understanding why those features do or don't exist in Borg.

Mesos requires you to run too much - There's barely a default scheduler. Swarm
doesn't require you to run enough - There's barely equivalents of "Services"
and it's all designed for plugging in packages without thinking of how they
fit together. Kubernetes strikes a balance.

Extensions to Kubernetes like istio are what's next on the horizon, and good
libraries to deal with the additional details in the k8s ecosystem (things
like grpc-channel balancers where you specify a service and a mode and it
automatically routes your requests and deals with failover and retry logic).
We don't have a good Kubernetes Mapreduce framework yet, but it's gonna show
up soon. There's a lot more as knowledge leaks out of Google.

------
lobster_johnson
There are several factors. Technical brilliance is one, but Kubernetes is of
course not entirely alone there; DC/OS (which is what you usually would be
talking about these days if you're saying "Mesos", since Mesos is just a
scheduler and doesn't in itself provide most of the features you need) is also
highly regarded. Swarm is not highly regarded, and often disparaged as an
inferior imitator.

Another big reason is better marketing and evangelism. Kubernetes has a _lot_
of companies betting on it and who are actively promoting it. It has the CNCF
(Cloud Native Computing Foundation) [1], a suborganization of the Linux
Foundation. While CNCF also includes Mesos, it was initially, I'm told,
invented as a way to move Kubernetes out of Google, thereby commoditizing and
democratizing it as an open-source ecosystem; Kubernetes was the first CNCF
project.

It's a savvy move on Google's part. It's reminiscent of Sun's "standardizing"
of J2EE, JMS, etc. back in the day, which in itself spawned a whole cottage
industry of enterprise software and certifications. CNCF/Linux Foundation, of
course, offer certifications, as well as events (KubeCon) and training
programs, all of which involve marketing and evangelism.

So there's a whole engine behind Kubernetes which make the competitors (of
which we have Hashicorp Nomad, DC/OS, Amazon ECS and to some extent CoreOS (at
least their original cluster design) and Rancher) seem like children's
lemonade stands by comparison.

But even with all of this momentum, none of this would work very well if
Kubernetes weren't popular with developers and sysadmins. Kubernetes has been
enthusiastically embraced for its excellent design, and so there's little
pushback from below; when devs tell management they should be betting on
Kubernetes, it's easy for them to say yes, but the opposite is also true. And
since Kubernetes also works to commoditize containers, it ends up being one of
those rare projects that appeal equally to developers, sysadmins and suits.
The pointy-haired bosses at IBM and other big corporations realize they can
leverage the platform for their own enterprise offerings.

So you could say that Kubernetes scales all the way down to the individual
developers, and also all the way up to the highest levels of big corporations.
It's the Linux of container orchestration.

[1] [https://www.cncf.io/](https://www.cncf.io/)

------
LeoSolaris
Personal opinion: More developer muscle behind Kubernetes as well as
significantly more funding.

------
theyinwhy
I asked a representative of Cloud Foundry this year why they are switching
from diego to kubernetes and he told me: "Three reasons: google, google,
google." I was not able to get out more information but am guessing google
just put more money / manpower / advertisment into kubernetes than cloud
foundry into diego.

------
rad_gruchalski
Fun fact: Mesosphere promoting Kubernetes on DC/OS. Example:
[https://mesosphere.com/blog/dcos-1_11-kubernetes/](https://mesosphere.com/blog/dcos-1_11-kubernetes/)

~~~
mehly
Fun fact, its not great and who wants two cluster tech's to manage.

------
hb3b
Swarm never executed and Mesos has Zookeeper/Java baggage.

------
Sevii
Good design, serious funding from google, good setup for contributors.

------
mnort
Personal opinion: Kelsey Hightower crushed advocacy and sexy demos over the
last few years

