Kubernetes Reviews

The primary use case of the solution is container orchestration for a microservices-based architecture.

I worked on deployment in the cloud and on-premises.

The solution has improved our organization by providing a computing layer abstraction between the cloud provider and on-premise. This has given us higher consistency in management and deployment strategies. The solution also reduces the effect of discrepancies between development and production environments.

The most valuable feature of the platform is the auto-healing and auto-scaling ability to offload to the platform tasks that were previously managed by humans.

There is a large ecosystem of products surrounding Kubernetes, making it difficult to identify the right solution due to the vast number of options.

I have been using the solution for six years.

The solution is a stable mature platform.

Scaling is a straightforward and standard process. With the integration provided by the cloud provider, we can even enable automatic scalability.

Setting up without Kubernetes provider services is complex.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

There is a large amount of overhead associated with maintenance, as we have to maintain everything from the operating system to the application. The cycle of updates and patches for the platform itself is very frequent, with a new version released every four months and various security patches in between. This makes the maintenance task very large if we have to do it ourselves.

The main benefit of Kubernetes is that it is currently the standard for container orchestration. Kubernetes is available across different cloud providers, providing consistency in management and portability that is not available with other products.

In the beginning, the solution may feel as if it has a lot of moving parts that are confusing and overwhelming.

Kubernetes is our platform of choice for running things in production, applications, and the like. Everything we build runs on Kubernetes, it's our platform of choice. I'm the principal devs engineer.

Kubernetes has improved our time to market because it's quite lightweight and easy to install. 

The most important feature is container orchestration. Kubernetes provides us with a mechanism to deploy or run in an automated fashion across nodes. I don't need to worry if it's running on node one or node two, it's all taken care of by Kubernetes. 

They have a very minimal interface to do certain things and that could be enhanced so that someone who is not as comfortable on CLI can also use the interface and play around with the cluster. Commercial offerings like Red Hat OpenShift offer it, but the open-source community edition from CNCF doesn't. I'd like to see an incubating project there. It's not one organization that is contributing to Kubernetes, it's a CNCF project, i.e. an open-source contributing forum.

They could possibly promote some data APIs to the production stage. They have a lot of APIs which are in beta stage which they continue to test. Perhaps it's time to upgrade them to a more product-release stage. I think it would offer peace of mind to customers in terms of stability. 

I've been using this solution for four years. 

This is a stable product if you are on a long-term support release. It's quite widely tested and used.

Kubernetes is highly scalable. We have around 150 users and it's used daily, mainly by developers and engineers. 

Kubernetes has a very active and vibrant community forum and people can join Slack Workspace and ask questions there. They announce new releases there too and people help out. If there are issues, you can open tickets, open GitHub issues and things like that.

We previously worked with Apache Hadoop but it was becoming somewhat cumbersome and complex to install.

Deployment complexity depends on the use case. I can install it on my laptop and it's easy but if it's being installed on production it needs to be set up in a cluster formation. That kind of deployment is moderately complex, and that's where we come into the picture, providing the automation for that. For someone without any knowledge in the area, deployment might require a third-party consultant or an integrator to help with that. 

I have some basic experience with Rancher and Red Hat OpenShift, which has a very nice graphical interface. An administrator, developer, or even a user can do a lot of stuff other than just seeing what applications are running. It's something that separates the commercial offerings from the community version of Kubernetes. If there were something like that in the open-source version, it would be a game changer. Of course, the commercial version also comes with hours of tech support and guides.

This solution is deployed on cloud with Azure.

Managing the container was a challenge. The cloud-managed Kubernetes allow us to take care of a big system and deployment and container management without having a big operational team.

It's still difficult to manage based on my experience. There are a lot of things that need to be done to get it up and running initially. It's very complex. The whole system required a big team, and that's why we were using the managed version. If we were not using the managed version, then it would have been very difficult to manage the system. Overall, it's very powerful, but there are also a lot of complexities to manage.

In the version that we're currently using, we still have to pull in a lot for different tools, like the distribution data, distribution tracing tool, etc. For it to be fully functional, we still have to deploy more tools into it. It should come with more default rules built into it for log aggregation, distributed tracing, and monitoring, so they can definitely improve upon those things. If they had better tool integration for monitoring and log aggregation, then it would be much better.

I've been using this solution for two years.

It's stable.

It's scalable. There are two different ways you can do it. You can manage it yourself, and then you're responsible for scalability software. But if you use a cloud solution, Google GKE and Azure have AKS and AWS had EKS. If we use those kinds of services, the scalability becomes easier to manage. It's definitely scalable, but even that part is very complex to manage unless you're using a cloud managed service.

It was very complex to set up the initial structure for Kubernetes. Using managed services made it simpler.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

Our use case is for everything deployed. For example, we are trying to switch from a Windows-based system to a Kubernetes Linux system. So, the entire application would be hosted on Kubernetes.

The valuable idea is that you can deploy it fast. Moreover, you have different pods that interact with each other, so you can identify problems with one pod and replace it. This way, the entire application isn't dependent on one server, avoiding issues with a single web server. There are several benefits to Kubernetes.

There is room for improvement in the setup process. 

I have been using Kubernetes for five years now. We use version 1.27.

It is a stable solution. We didn't face any problems.

It is a scalable solution. You can add more nodes and remove nodes; it's highly scalable.

 To deploy, it's just me. But for usage, there are 12 people, developers, who use it to deploy things on Kubernetes.

We have it in one place because we have a local provider. But we have a backup data center in another city, which is also owned by the same company, just in case we need a backup.

The first time it was a little bit complex because I prepared the answer bundle. But after that, I can deploy it without any problem because I have everything on hand. So it's just a matter of running a command to deploy it. It's quite straightforward now.

The solution is not entirely on-premises, but it's hosted by a local provider. We deploy it on their VM.

Kubernetes has done a good job. For example, I used Rancher 1.0, and now I am using AirKey 2, which made deployment a little easier. It has been a bit easy to do with the Rancher version. So, it's more straightforward with the recent version. There are some improvements in the newer version. 

I deployed the solution myself. Now, it takes me around half an hour. 

Moreover, I handle the maintenance of the solution. 

Kubernetes is open source, so it doesn't have any licensing cost except for OpenShift.

There may be some additional costs for infrastructure and what they provide on top, but not for Kubernetes itself. Even OpenShift charges for support.

I looked into HashiCorp.

That advice depends on the use case. For example, for us, it makes sense to use Kubernetes, but for others, it may not. It depends on what you have and how many services and applications you have that need to be integrated. For example, if you have one application, you do not need to communicate between applications, and it doesn't make sense to have Kubernetes. 

If you have multiple applications that need to work together, then Kubernetes offers features like scalability and ease of deployment can be very cool.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

At my company, we use Kubernetes to host our databases and applications. We work in the telecom domain, and our products use database technologies like Oracle, Postgres, and Cloudgres. We use Kubernetes to host NoSQL databases like Couchbase and Postgres and for some of our containerized applications. We are involved in multiple projects, not just a single one.

Kubernetes is a microservice. So, the best thing about Kubernetes is that most of the containerized applications are centralized. You don't need to develop specific company applications on top of container images. Kubernetes also provides flexibility in maintenance. It takes away most of the maintenance part, such as if a port crashes, it comes up automatically, making deployment very easy. We just need to run a few commands to deploy the application, and maintenance is taken care of by Kubernetes. Upgrading applications becomes smooth, requiring less effort and time.

Resource utilization, cost savings, and portability are additional advantages of Kubernetes. It is available in the public clouds, and portability becomes very easy. When it comes to networking, Kubernetes offers very flexible containerization with the added benefit of CSI.

There are several areas where Kubernetes could improve. For example, in one of our database projects, we needed a storage layer that would work on safer sites. Our application is a permanent one that requires low latency and is intensive in terms of networking. It works on every single URL and needs access to the database. After researching several solutions available in the market, we went with Portworx for the database back-end storage layer. However, we encountered an issue when we brought down one of the worker nodes in a cluster of three nodes. The pod that was hosted around that worker node was not responding on other worker nodes, even though it was responding. We found out that there was a feature in the alpha stages in the stable site that could have solved this issue, but we don't enable alpha features in our production environment. Therefore, we increased the replication factor in the storage layer from one to two to avoid this issue. Our application is latency-sensitive and demands low latency in terms of network and response time.

So, increasing a replica of the storage level will also cause double the I/O, which has additional costs involved. We did extensive research on that and found that the feature needs to be stabilized; certain improvements are required. 

I have been using Kubernetes for around two years now, and I'm familiar with it. I worked closely with both the implementation team and the engineering team as well as the research and development team.

It is a stable solution. 

Scaling up and down is easy in Kubernetes, so adding or removing worker nodes is simple and straightforward.

The engineering team uses it the most. We started with three projects, and now I can see around 150 to 200 people using it.

There is a good support community available.

It's free and open-source; anyone can use it. So there are no hidden fees or anything regarding Kubernetes.

I would encourage you to start with Docker containers first, get the hang of it, and then move on to Kubernetes.

Understand the Docker concepts, software, container networking, and how container images are built. Once that's done, it becomes easy to enter into the Kubernetes world. Kubernetes is an orchestration tool that builds on top of Docker containerization.

I would rate it as excellent because it is very easy to deploy applications, manage ports, and expose applications both within and outside the cluster. Kubernetes also has a good reach and can be used in both private and public clouds, and there is plenty of support in terms of documentation and online forums to help users who run into any issues. 

We use the product to manage application deployment by troubleshooting and collecting logs.

The most valuable features of Kubernetes have been autoscaling and its resilience mechanisms.

The platform could be more convenient to use. While the Kubernetes CLI is powerful, the interface needs to be improved. The users often navigate between various third-party IDEs. Thus, a more consolidated or standardized interface could streamline the user experience, allowing easier access without the need to balance between multiple tools.

We have been using Kubernetes for three years.

The platform is stable. However, it depends on the cloud configuration. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

The product is scalable. We have 20 Kubernetes users working on and deploying it. We plan to increase the usage.

We contact Microsoft in case of any queries as we are working with Azure Kubernetes services.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on Kubernetes services. It is easy to configure while working in an Azure environment. The Azure portal simplifies the process through configurations with tools like Terraform. It is complicated to create the platform on virtual machines and on-premise machines. We can deploy it within 20 to 30 minutes using data pipelines.

Microsoft provides reasonable costs for Kubernetes.

I advise others to work with Kubernetes if they are developing or running the cloud native configuration. However, there are more cost-effective solutions. I rate it a nine out of ten.

We use the solution to manage the containers efficiently.

The solution has a well-defined interface for every other function like network, CRA container, and run-time interfaces. It is fantastic as open-source software, very generic, and easy to use.

The solution's learning courses for the new users and developers must be easier to understand. Presently, they are very abstract, and it is challenging for users to find data.

I have been using the solution for a year and a half.

It is a stable solution.

The solution is easily scalable. I rate it ten out of ten. Our technical team for the solution consists of ten executives. At the same time, there are two million end users.

I took help from the solution's technical team for Stack Overflow. Their service was good, and I rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

We switched to Kubernetes for better scalability, maintenance, and administration.

The solution's initial setup was straightforward. I've used Rancher Kubernetes engine to set the cluster. The deployment took two days to complete. The process involved downloading the binary file and configuring it to servers.

We deployed the solution with the help of our in-house team. The team of three, including data engineers and data operations managers, execute maintenance for it.

I have seen a return on investment for the solution. 

We use the solution's open-source version.

It is easy to maintain distributed systems and applications using the solution. Although, it requires a few new features to improve managing the volumes. I rate it ten out of ten.

We use Kubernetes for deployment of TIBCO software analyst. We then use Rancher to deploy the Kubernetes cluster.

Kubernetes is POD technology so you can run the number of containers you need to host one by one and use similar microservices for the containers. This is a great feature of Kubernetes. The product provides auto rollback functionality and a scale-up and scale-down functionality. These are the main features that we didn't previously have. For scaling or restarting PODs or any services is very easy. We can configure the commands to easily scale up and scale down, based on the load requirement. If some business servers added more load, then we increase the POD, and increase the services. 

Kubernetes lacks some flexibility compared to other products such as OpenShift. 

I've been using this solution for four years. 

The solution is stable.

The initial setup is straightforward. We have our own Terraform script to deploy the Ansible. It provisions the orchestration and deploys Kubernetes and we install Rancher over Kubernetes and deploy the entire orchestration. We don't use any third parties. We carry out our own maintenance because we don't want to be dependent on third parties.

We use the open source solution and only move to the commercial platform for the purpose of node vulnerability. We use Instana and Qualys agents for security monitoring vulnerability purposes. 

For anyone wanting to use this solution, it's important to know the basics of Linux. In addition, Docker plays an important role and it's worth checking the YAML files before moving to Kubernetes. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10.