Overview
According to market conditions, Kubernetes (aka "K8s") has become the king of container orchestration, surpassing competitors such as Docker Swarm and Mesos. But, at the same time as K8s (2014), there was another orchestration project, HashiCorp's Nomad (2015).
While Kubernetes, incubated by Google and with ongoing community support, is actually ideal for container orchestration, it is not a solution for all use cases. Many developers cite the complexity of new features and the security concerns of misconfigurations as potential barriers to implementation. While these issues can be overcome, most users admit that the inherent complexity of Kubernetes makes onboarding and securing the platform rather confusing. If you want to explore more container orchestration options, Nomad might be an option worth checking out.
What exactly is Nomad?
Nomad is an orchestration tool from Hashicorp that allows users to deploy and manage different types of applications such as:
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Support container
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Support for traditional application stacks.
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Support for microservice applications.
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Support batch application.
From above, Nomad looks like this
What makes Nomad useful is a rich set of APIs:
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Help us automate deployments, application scaling and upgrades.
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Enables developers to directly manage deployments.
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Automatically manage failures.
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Hide complex details like node management and let users choose only what is needed to get their application up and running.
As mentioned earlier, Docker is supported, but any type of application can be used on any type of operating system required (Linux, Windows, BSD, and OSX are all supported). Clusters can be created, adding nodes from different data centers and different regions.
Finally, Nomad is a highly extensible tool that allows users to go beyond the limitations of standard extension concepts.
Why Nomad?
The main difference between Nomad and Kubernetes is that Nomad is more general and lightweight. Nomad can work as a simple task scheduler, or take on a heavier orchestration role depending on project specifications. Nomad is part of a suite of complementary tools produced by HashiCorp:
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Terraform, for rapid infrastructure development
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Consul, for automating serving networks
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Vault, Hashicorp's secrets management tool
Compare
Kubernetes is an end-to-end container orchestration platform that relies on a dynamic ecosystem of various loosely coupled components.
Nomad is architecturally much simpler, but provides the same functionality as a powerful coordinator. These two platforms have similarities and similarities and differences, please read below for details.
Same point
Both Kubernetes and Nomad are open source tools built for container orchestration and support similar use cases. Therefore, both share many common characteristics:
point of difference
Although both platforms are suitable for container orchestration, Nomad and Kubernetes have some fundamental differences:
Advantages and disadvantages
Which one to choose?
in conclusion
Kubernetes is a stand-alone orchestration tool with many built-in services that provide all the functionality needed to run container-based applications. It has a large and responsive community support, provides a rich toolkit and a large number of out-of-the-box solutions. However, manual setup is difficult and is only designed for containerized applications.
In contrast, Nomad is easy to install and operate because it only focuses on cluster management. It also supports various types of workloads, but it provides limited functionality and requires the installation of third-party tools to solve tasks that Kubernetes implements by default.
If your application requires additional functionality, and you are willing to invest the time to learn the tool, then Kubernetes may be a better choice . However , if you prefer a simpler workflow with no additional features, then Nomad might be the application for you . Ultimately, which tool you choose depends on your use case and your ability to implement that tool in your production cycle. There is never one tool that fits all , so be sure to consider the above factors when making your decision.
References
[1] Developers: https://containerjournal.com/topics/container-management/ux-layers-for-kubernetes-the-next-cloud-native-abstraction/
[2] Security misconfiguration: https://containerjournal.com/features/insecure-defaults-remain-a-threat-for-kubernetes/
[3] Security: https://containerjournal.com/topics/container-security/what-will-it-take-to-shift-kubernetes-security-left/