Container Orchestrators

An overview of the container orchestration technologies DuploCloud supports

Most application workloads deployed on DuploCloud are in Docker containers. The rest consist of serverless functions, and big data workloads like Amazon EMR jobs, Airflow, and Sagemaker. DuploCloud abstracts the complexity of container orchestration technologies, allowing you to focus on deploying, updating, and debugging your containerized application.

Among the technologies DuploCloud supports are:

• Kubernetes: On AWS, DuploCloud supports orchestration using Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). On GCP we support GKE auto pilot and node-pool based. On Azure we support AKS and Azure web apps.

• Built-in (DuploCloud): DuploCloud platform's Built-in container management has the same interface as the docker run command, but it can be scaled to manage hundreds of containers across many hosts, providing capabilities such as associated load balancers, DNS, and more.

• AWS ECS Fargate: Fargate is a technology you can use with Elastic Container Service (ECS) to run containers without having to manage servers or clusters of EC2 instances.

Container Orchestration Feature Matrix

You can use the feature matrix below to compare the features of the orchestration technologies that DuploCloud supports. DuploCloud can help you implement whatever option you choose through the DuploCloud Portal or the Terraform API.

Feature	Kubernetes	Built-In	ECS Fargate
Ease of use
Features and ecosystem tools
Suitability for stateful apps
Stability and maintenance
AWS cost
Multi-cloud (w/o DuploCloud)

One dot indicates a low rating, two dots a medium rating, and three dots a high rating. For example, Kubernetes has a low ease-of-use rating but a high rating for stateful applications.

Feature Definitions

See the sections below for a detailed explanation of the cloud orchestrator's feature matrix ratings.

Ease of Use

Kubernetes is extensible and customizable, but not without a cost in ease of use. The DuploCloud Platform reduces the complexities of Kubernetes, making it comparable with other container orchestration technologies in ease of use/adoption.

DuploCloud's Built-in orchestration mirrors docker run. You can Secure Shell (SSH) into a virtual machine (VM) and run docker commands to debug and diagnose. If you have an application with a few stateless microservices or configurations that use environment variables or AWS services like SSM, S3, or Secrets Manager, consider using DuploCloud's Built-in container orchestration.

ECS Fargate contains proprietary constructs (such as task definitions, tasks, or services) that can be hard to learn. As Fargate is serverless, you can't control the host Docker, so commands such as docker ps and docker restart are unavailable. This makes debugging a container crash very difficult and time-consuming. DuploCloud simplifies Fargate with an out-of-the-box setup for logging, shell access, and abstraction of proprietary constructs and behavior.

Features and Ecosystem Tools

Kubernetes is rich in additional built-in features and ecosystem tools like Secrets and ConfigMaps. Built-in and ECS rely on native AWS services such as AWS Secrets Manager, SSM, S3, and others. While Kubernetes features have AWS equivalents, third parties like Influx DB, Time Series DB, Prefect, etc. tend to publish their software as Kubernetes packages (Helm charts).

Suitability for Stateful Apps

Stateful applications should be avoided in AWS. Instead, managed cloud storage solutions should be leveraged for the best availability and Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. If this is undesirable due to cost, Kubernetes offers the best solution. Kubernetes uses StatefulSets and Volumes to implicitly manage Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes. With Built-in and ECS, you must use a shared Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) drive, which may not have feature parity with Kubernetes volume management.

Stability and Maintenance

Although Kubernetes is highly stable, it is an open-source product. Kubernetes' native customizability and extensibility can lead to points of failure. For example, when a mandatory cluster upgrade is needed. This complexity often leads to support costs from third-party vendors. Maintenance can be especially costly with EKS, as versions are frequently deprecated, requiring you to upgrade the control plane and data nodes. DuploCloud automates this upgrade process but still requires careful planning and execution.

AWS Cost

EKS control plane is fairly inexpensive, but operating an EKS environment without business support (at an additional premium) is not recommended. Small businesses may reduce costs by adding the support tier only when needed.

Multi-Cloud

For many enterprises and independent software vendors, multi-cloud capabilities are, or will soon be a requirement. While Kubernetes provides this benefit, DuploCloud's implementation is much easier to maintain and implement.