Kubernetes vs. SUSE Rancher

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Kubernetes
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Kubernetes is an open-source container cluster manager.N/A
SUSE Rancher
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Developed by Rancher Labs and now from SUSE, Rancher is open-source software that enables organizations to deploy and manage Kubernetes at scale, on any infrastructure across the data center, cloud, branch offices, and the network edge. Rancher centrally manages Kubernetes clusters across the organization in order to ensure security and accelerate transformation. Rancher is also available hosted. Hosted Rancher is a fully managed Rancher control plane - presented as the fastest, most cost…
$7,594.99
per year up to 500 nodes
Pricing
KubernetesSUSE Rancher
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Subscription license
7,594.99
per year up to 500 nodes
Standard Subscription
11,234.99
per year 10 nodes
Priority Subscription
30,514.99
per year 10 nodes
Management Server Priority Subscription
41,830.99
per year 1 instance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KubernetesSUSE Rancher
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KubernetesSUSE Rancher
Features
KubernetesSUSE Rancher
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Kubernetes
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
SUSE Rancher
7.5
Ratings
3% below category average
Security and Isolation8.50 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Container Orchestration9.50 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Cluster Management9.50 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Storage Management7.00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization7.50 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Discovery Tools8.50 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks8.50 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery8.50 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KubernetesSUSE Rancher
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.6 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
KubernetesSUSE Rancher
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
8.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KubernetesSUSE Rancher
Likelihood to Recommend
Along with all the best features and support by k8s, the automatic container scheduling to worker nodes and also self-healing containers which is what I like the most. On the other side, when I was installing the k8s cluster on CentOS 8, it was quite difficult for me, but never mind it is working as we expected and it is a one-time effort. Especially, in my case, there are more than 7 application containers required to run and communicate with each other, so for us, Kubernetes is an optimal solution.
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SUSE Rancher as a management tool becomes useful on a larger scale. Small deployments not so much. If someone also requires Kubernetes capacity or storage, Rancher is an excellent choice. Also, without Kubernetes' skills, it is unlikely that Rancher deployment is going to be a success. Then again if someone else is managing your Kubernetes capacity, setting up the software's capacity will yield greater control. Rancher is not a very integrated solution similar to others in the market.
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Pros
  • Complex cluster management can be done with simple commands with strong authentication and authorization schemes
  • Exhaustive documentation and open community smoothens the learning process
  • As a user a few concepts like pod, deployment and service are sufficient to go a long way
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  • Public and private cloud infrastructure providers based on K8s CAPI
  • REST API that can be used to integrate company services with Rancher
  • GUI that is easy to learn and use in daily operations
  • Builtin GitOps automation solution based on Fleet project
  • It is fully open source
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Cons
  • Local development, Kubernetes does tend to be a bit complicated and unnecessary in environments where all development is done locally.
  • The need for add-ons, Helm is almost required when running Kubernetes. This brings a whole new tool to manage and learn before a developer can really start to use Kubernetes effectively.
  • Finicy configmap schemes. Kubernetes configmaps often have environment breaking hangups. The fail safes surrounding configmaps are sadly lacking.
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  • No possibility to snapshot Projects. You can snapshot and restore the whole Kubernetes cluster, but not a Project or Namespace. For this, you have to use external tools.
  • You cannot detach the Rancher-created Kubernetes clusters from Rancher management.
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Likelihood to Renew
The Kubernetes is going to be highly likely renewed as the technologies that will be placed on top of it are long term as of planning. There shouldn't be any last minute changes in the adoption and I do not anticipate sudden change of the core underlying technology. It is just that the slow process of technology adoption that makes it hard to switch to something else.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
It is an eminently usable platform. However, its popularity is overshadowed by its complexity. To properly leverage the capabilities and possibilities of Kubernetes as a platform, you need to have excellent understanding of your use case, even better understanding of whether you even need Kubernetes, and if yes - be ready to invest in good engineering support for the platform itself
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Overall it deserves an 8 out of 10. The platform is very easy to use as long as the UI is stable. We have had a few buggy versions in the past. However the CLI is excellent and the platform is simple to manage and maintain. It is easy to deploy and offer for company wide use which increases utilization and ROI.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
The documentation is quite complete and there is a very active community that is willing to collaborate and answer questions for those who are just starting out.
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Alternatives Considered
As I said earlier also - - K8s manage the workloads better as compared to OpenStack in terms of reliability, observability & reachability. - K8s is not limited to only a single networking or storage solution as compared to OpenStack. - Networking (which is a key concept) is much simpler in K8s as compared to OpenStack. - It is possible to upgrade your applications without downtime in K8s but in OpenStack, you either have to divert the traffic or face an outage because you have to delete the whole stack & then recreate it.
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SUSE Rancher is an excellent choice for managing multiple Kubernetes clusters, especially when catering to different teams with distinct access rights and requirements. It allows us to deploy these clusters on-premises across various sites or in the cloud. However, if you’re dealing with only one or a few Kubernetes clusters, using SUSE Rancher might introduce unnecessary complexity. This is where EKS wins, as its native cloud based abilities are better suited to scale, support higher complexity and larger demand.
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Return on Investment
  • Because of microservices, Kubernetes makes it easy to find the cost of each application easily.
  • Like every new technology, initially, it took more resources to educate ourselves but over a period of time, I believe it's going to be worth it.
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  • Shortens "Time-to-Market" factor for new business applications or implementing new functionalities. From 1 to 50 microservices-based business applications in 6 years.
  • 24/7 availability, generates more money. There are many infrastructure components that are regularly powered-off for maintenance or upgrade, bur we rarely are turning off our downstream Kubernetes clusters where our business applications lives.
  • Single Point of Contact with platform maintenance and development Team, eases implementation of new business applications
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ScreenShots