Kubernetes icon

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers into logical units for easy management and discovery.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Kubernetes provides a framework to run distributed systems resiliently across clusters of machines, hide the complexity of managing many different types of hardware and expose it through a uniform and portable interface.

Some key features of Kubernetes include:

  • Automatic binpacking - It automatically places containers based on their resource requirements and other constraints.
  • Self-healing - It restarts containers that fail, replaces containers, kills containers that don't respond to health checks, and doesn't advertise them to clients until they are ready to serve.
  • Horizontal scaling - It scales out by adding or removing replica pods very quickly through a command or UI interaction.
  • Automated rollouts and rollbacks - It rolls out and rolls back application deployments and configuration changes smoothly.
  • Storage orchestration - It automatically mounts the storage system of your choice, whether from local storage, a public cloud provider or a network storage system.
  • Automated release management - It easily orchestrates the rollout of new software versions without downtime.
  • Secret and configuration management - It safely stores and manages sensitive information and configuration details for your applications.

Overall, Kubernetes simplifies the deployment and management of containerized applications at scale.

The Best Kubernetes Alternatives

Top Apps like Kubernetes

Rancher, AWS Firecracker, Heroku, Portainer, OpenShift, Vagrant, virt-manager, Rancher Desktop, Consul by HashiCorp, Deis, HashiCorp Nomad, Last.Backend, Overnode, Docker Swarm, Qovery, OpenFaas, EvenNode, Apache Mesos, Platform.sh, Knative, Lazydocker, Nanobox, Kontena, Dokku, Mesosphere DCOS, Nebula Container Orchestrator, Virtual PC, Cycle.io, Chef Habitat, Apache ZooKeeper, DataCol, Panamax, Kublr, TuTum, Stackato, StackEngine, Magalix, Service Fabric, Imixs-Cloud are some alternatives to Kubernetes.

Rancher

Rancher is an open-source container management platform designed to help developers and DevOps teams deploy, manage, and secure containerized applications across multiple infrastructure providers. Key features of Rancher include:Intuitive GUI for managing Kubernetes clusters across public and private clouds, as well as bare metal serversSupport for leading Kubernetes distributions...

AWS Firecracker

AWS Firecracker is an open source virtualization technology that provides lightweight and secure microvirtual machines (microVMs) optimized for serverless computing. It was developed by Amazon Web Services to enable high-density multi-tenancy, fast startup times, and security for functions and container workloads.Some key features and capabilities of Firecracker include:MicroVM...

Heroku

Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) that streamlines the process of building, deploying, and scaling applications. Founded in 2007 and later acquired by Salesforce, Heroku has become a popular choice for developers seeking a straightforward and scalable platform for hosting web applications. Heroku abstracts much of the infrastructure...

Portainer

Portainer is an open-source platform for managing Docker and Kubernetes container infrastructure. It provides a graphical user interface that allows you to easily manage containerized applications and microservices without needing deep technical knowledge.Some of the key features Portainer offers include:Visualizer - Get a birds-eye view of your Docker...

OpenShift

OpenShift is a cloud platform as a service developed by Red Hat that allows developers to quickly develop, host, and scale applications in a cloud environment. Some key things to know about OpenShift:It provides pre-configured application environments to support quick application deployment in languages like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby...

Vagrant

Vagrant is an open source tool for building complete development environments using VirtualBox, Hyper-V, Docker containers, or other providers. It provides a consistent workflow for developers to easily create, configure, and destroy virtualized development environments.Some key features of Vagrant include:Works across multiple virtualization platforms like VirtualBox and Hyper-V...

Virt-manager

virt-manager is an open-source graphical application for managing virtual machines using the libvirt toolkit and related technologies. It provides a simple way to view, control, and manage guest virtual machines running on the KVM and Xen hypervisors as well as other libvirt-supported technologies such as LXC, QEMU, and VirtualBox.Some...

Rancher Desktop

Rancher Desktop is an open source Kubernetes distribution designed to run on desktop operating systems like macOS, Windows and Linux. It enables developers to easily deploy fully-featured Kubernetes clusters on their local workstations for testing, development and learning purposes.Some key features of Rancher Desktop include:Single downloadable binary that...

Consul by HashiCorp

Consul by HashiCorp is an open-source service networking solution that enables service discovery, health checking, segmentation, and configuration across dynamic infrastructure. It provides a full-featured control plane with service discovery, configuration, and segmentation functionality built-in. Key features of Consul include:Service Discovery - Consul makes it simple for services to...

Deis

Deis is an open source platform as a service (PaaS) built on top of Kubernetes that allows developers to easily deploy, manage, and scale applications. Some key features of Deis include:Simple Git push deployments - Developers can deploy apps simply by pushing code to a Git repository.Buildpacks -...

HashiCorp Nomad

HashiCorp Nomad is an open-source workload orchestrator and scheduler designed for deploying and managing containers and non-containerized applications across on-prem and public cloud infrastructure. Key features include:Flexible scheduling algorithms for bin packing, spreading, reservations, and affinity-based scheduling to optimize for resource utilization, high availability, and low latency.Supports Docker...

Last.Backend

Last.Backend is an open-source platform as a service (PaaS) designed specifically for containers and Kubernetes. It aims to simplify the deployment and management of containerized workloads in a Kubernetes cluster.Some key features of Last.Backend include:Automated deployment pipeline - it provides a GitOps workflow to build container...

Overnode

Overnode is an open-source interface design and prototyping tool built as an alternative to Figma. It allows designers and developers to collaborate and iterate on ideas quickly and easily.Some key features of Overnode include:Flexible design system - Easily create reusable components like buttons, headers, icons etc. Supports variants...

Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm is a container orchestration tool that allows users to manage a cluster of Docker hosts as a single virtual host. It handles the scheduling and distribution of containers automatically across the cluster.Some key features of Docker Swarm include:Automatic container distribution and scheduling - Swarm intelligently schedules...

Qovery

Qovery is a platform designed to simplify and accelerate application deployment and operations across multiple cloud providers. It provides a unified interface to deploy to AWS, GCP, Azure, and private clouds.Some key capabilities of Qovery include:Infrastructure provisioning and management - Qovery handles all the infrastructure provisioning, configuration, scaling...

OpenFaas

OpenFaas is an open source framework designed to make it easier to deploy serverless functions and microservices. It provides a platform for rapidly building functions that auto-scale and include metrics and monitoring out of the box.Some key features of OpenFaas:Language agnostic - supports functions written in any languageAuto-scaling...

EvenNode

EvenNode is an open-source alternative to Airtable that allows you to create flexible databases and views to organize anything. Some key features of EvenNode include:Flexible data models - No rigid schemas or restrictive types. Adapt your bases as needs change.Custom views - Visualize your data via galleries, boards...

Apache Mesos

Apache Mesos is an open source cluster manager that provides efficient resource isolation and sharing across distributed applications or frameworks. It sits between the application layer and the operating system on a distributed system, and makes it easier to deploy and manage applications in large-scale clustered environments.Some key features...

Platform.sh

Platform.sh is a platform as a service designed for hosting web applications. Some key features include:Supports popular frameworks like PHP, Python, Ruby, Node.js, JavaAutomated infrastructure management and deployment workflowsIntegrated CI/CD to easily build, test and deploy applicationsAutomatic scaling, health monitoring, and securityGlobal CDN for asset acceleration...

Knative

Knative is an open source Kubernetes-based platform for deploying and running serverless workloads. It enables developers to focus on writing stateless, event-driven functions that can scale up and down automatically based on demand.Some key features and benefits of Knative include:Simplified scale-to-zero and event driven architectures on KubernetesAutomatically scales...

Lazydocker

Lazydocker is an open-source terminal UI written in Go for managing docker containers and images. It provides a terminal UI on top of the docker command-line interface, designed to make it simple and fast to view, manage, and execute docker commands.Some key features of Lazydocker include:Live views of...

Nanobox

Nanobox is a development platform designed to simplify and standardize the development and deployment of applications. It allows developers to create consistent development environments that mimic the production infrastructure, making the transition from dev to deploy seamless.Key features of Nanobox include:Creates isolated environments for each app, ensuring all...

Kontena

Kontena is an open source platform for deploying and running containerized applications. It provides a complete solution for container orchestration and management that works with Docker containers. Some key features of Kontena:Simple and intuitive user interface - Makes deploying and managing containers easy through a web-based UI.Multi-host container...

Dokku

Dokku is an open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that allows developers to easily deploy, manage, and scale applications on a single server. It is designed to be lightweight, simple to install, and uses Docker and Git workflows under the hood.Some key features of Dokku include:Git push deployments - Developers...

Mesosphere DCOS

Mesosphere DCOS (Datacenter Operating System) is an open source distributed operating system based on Apache Mesos technology for efficiently managing clusters of computers. It provides resource sharing and scalability for distributed applications or services.Key features of DCOS include:Builds on top of Apache Mesos to take advantage of resource...

Nebula Container Orchestrator

Nebula Container Orchestrator (Nebula) is an open-source container orchestration and management platform. It allows users to easily deploy, manage and scale containerized applications across clusters of hosts.Some key features of Nebula include:Deployment automation - Nebula can deploy application stacks with a single command across a clusterAuto-scaling - It...

Virtual PC

Virtual PC is virtualization software from Microsoft that allows you to run multiple operating systems as virtual machines on a Windows host computer. It provides an easy way to set up isolated environments for testing software, running alternate operating systems, or compartmentalizing different tasks.Some key features of Virtual PC...

Cycle.io

Cycle.io is a flexible, web-based project management software designed for agile development teams. It provides a variety of tools to help plan, organize, track and manage software projects of all sizes.Key features of Cycle.io include:Customizable boards to visualize workflows and track progressStory maps, epics, user stories...

Chef Habitat

Chef Habitat is an open source application automation platform created by Chef Software. It allows developers to build, deploy, and manage applications and services across heterogeneous infrastructure environments such as on-premises data centers, public cloud platforms, or hybrid infrastructure.Key features and benefits of Chef Habitat include:Provides a consistent...

Apache ZooKeeper

Apache ZooKeeper is an open-source coordination service for distributed applications. It provides services like:Naming: Provides naming registry for services, applications, hosts etc. This helps avoid collisions.Configuration management: Stores configuration information that can be used by applications.Synchronization: Provides distributed synchronization like locks.Group services: Provides services for groups...

DataCol

DataCol is an open-source data catalog and metadata management software designed to help organizations track, manage and gain insights from their data more efficiently. Here are some key capabilities:Automated data discovery and indexing - DataCol can crawl different data stores like databases, file shares, cloud storage etc. to automatically...

Panamax

Panamax is an open-source container management platform built on Docker and CoreOS. It allows users to easily deploy, monitor, manage, and scale Docker containers through a simple graphical user interface.Some key features of Panamax include:Graphical container management - Easily create, run,and link Docker containers without touching the...

Kublr

Kublr is an enterprise-grade Kubernetes operations platform that helps teams easily deploy, manage, and scale Kubernetes clusters across on-premises, cloud, and edge environments. Some key capabilities and benefits of Kublr include:Simplified UI for Kubernetes operations - Kublr provides an intuitive graphical user interface designed specifically for enterprise Kubernetes use...

TuTum

TuTum is a free, open-source transcription software application for transcribing audio and video media files. It provides a simple and intuitive user interface that allows users to easily import media, control playback speed, insert timecodes, and type transcripts. Key features of TuTum include:Support for common media file formats like...

Stackato

Stackato is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution created by ActiveState for deploying and managing applications in the cloud. It allows developers to focus on writing code rather than managing infrastructure.Some key features of Stackato include:Support for deploying apps written in multiple languages like Java, Ruby, Node.js, PHP, Python...

StackEngine

StackEngine is an open-source platform for building knowledge bases and question answering systems. It provides a suite of tools to capture, structure, and operationalize domain expertise and knowledge content at scale.Key features and capabilities of StackEngine include:Knowledge graph data model for representing entities and relationshipsStructured content editor for...

Magalix

Magalix is a cloud-native application management platform purpose-built for Kubernetes. It provides organizations with visibility and control across their Kubernetes clusters, containers, and cloud-native applications to optimize performance, costs, and efficiency.Key features of Magalix include:Resource monitoring - Track pod resource usage, node capacity, etc. to identify and prevent...

Service Fabric

Service Fabric is an open-source distributed systems platform developed by Microsoft for building and managing scalable containerized and microservices applications across clusters of machines. Some key aspects of Service Fabric include:Handling stateful and stateless microservices for building distributed, scalable cloud applicationsAutomated deployment, scaling, load balancing, failover and cluster managementSupport...

Imixs-Cloud

Imixs-Cloud is an open source workflow engine and business process management (BPM) platform designed specifically for cloud-native applications. It provides a highly scalable and flexible workflow engine that integrates seamlessly with microservices architectures.Key features of Imixs-Cloud include:Distributed architecture - Imixs-Cloud is designed to run on Kubernetes and scale...