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Kubernetes

Score9.2 out of 10

170 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source container cluster manager.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Kubernetes has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 170 ratings of Kubernetes's features
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Top Performing Features

  • Container Orchestration

    The product’s ability to automate networking, deployment, scaling, and other container management functions.

    Category average: 8.2

  • Cluster Management

    Product’s ability to centralize the management of multiple container or node clusters.

    Category average: 8.1

  • Security and Isolation

    Product provides effective tools to isolate containers, nodes, and clusters and protect them from threats.

    Category average: 8.5

Areas for Improvement

  • Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging

    Product provides tools to manage performance, health, and other data related to containers or clusters. This could include analytics tools, logging tools, live dashboards, etc.

    Category average: 7.9

  • Resource Allocation and Optimization

    Product’s ability to balance resource requirements, availability needs, and workload intensity to optimize resource usage.

    Category average: 7.7

  • Storage Management

    Product’s ability to allocate storage resources and manage both temporary and persistent data.

    Category average: 8.2

Reviews

What users are saying about Kubernetes.
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Kubernetes

Incentivized
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Kubernetes allows to create a unified compute and scheduling substrate across many potentially disparate providers and vendors. Even more importantly, this substrate can then be used to provide developers an abstracted platform to use. That, of course, requires layers of automations and services, but that's where the unified approach of using standardized Kubernetes-based APIs and concepts pays off. Everything else is just side effects and depends on how well you execute.

Pros

  • Standardized APIs
  • Scheduling workloads
  • Managing resources

Cons

  • Complexity
  • Overhead
  • OOTB mechanisms sometimes not efficient enough (mitigated by using DIY tooling or something that is not a core k8s offering but exists in the rather rich ecosystem). HPA would be an example

Return on Investment

  • The primary impact in appropriate use cases is streamlining and unifying your computing substrate
  • If leveraged properly, it *can* lead to cost savings and resourse usage efficiencies, however, it is very important to emphasize that Kubernetes by itself does NOT guarantee any of those. Use wisely!

Usability

Alternatives Considered

HashiCorp Nomad

Kubernetes overview.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Kubernetes is widely used in the organization as the main workload for all microservices and applications, including infrastructure and dev/sec/ops deployments throughout the stack. Our Kubernetes software uses all of the orchestration's capabilities. As a tool for Kubernetes we use VMWare Tanzu.

Pros

  • Work get done fast.
  • Deployments are easy.
  • Infra setup is easier than ever.
  • No downtime.

Cons

  • Broader support for older software.
  • Get easier on the update cycle and introduce fewer but more not-so-breaking changes.
  • A dashboard that provides a whole Kubernetes experience (Such as OpenShift or similar products) is missing.

Return on Investment

  • Big overall impact on the business throughout containerizing apps on Kubernetes.
  • Solid infrastructure for all sorts of services.
  • No downtime or hiccups.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Red Hat OpenShift

Other Software Used

Red Hat OpenShift, Rook, Grafana Loki

Simplifies your life for deployment of large applications

Incentivized
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Kubernetes to deploy our microservices on different servers automatically. The addressed business problems are deployment and lifecycle management of our microservices as well as checking the current state and command line output for troubleshooting if necessary. It's a very central software in our organization because it saves much time and helps to keep an stable environment

Pros

  • LCM Management
  • Keeping an healthy, reliable environment
  • Scalability

Cons

  • Learning Curve: K8s is hard for beginners
  • Storage Management could be simplified
  • Upgrading k8s itself

Return on Investment

  • Efficient and reliable lifecycle management of containers
  • More time to focus on application than on the deployment
  • Efficient management of multiple deployments and namespaces

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Docker

Other Software Used

ChatGPT, Microsoft 365, Jira Work Management, GitLab, JFrog Artifactory

MatbaRofex Argentina exchange and K8S

Agustin Lacorazza
Infraestructure and Security Leader in Information Technology at MatbaRofex / Primary (501-1000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Kubernetes in a big bare metal cluster, and we are here at the Red Hat summit to talk about a migration directly to OpenShift to create an hybrid infrastructure that can help us to achieve a more resilient services for our clients, actually we got a lot of problem with the limits of k8s, especially with the calico service middleware, when our transactions are with high demand calico gets crazy and reset connections, for example, also we got and issue with the middleware limits, we are running 160 pods for worker, and we got 6 mega hardware workers, that we cant use it fully hardware for the middleware limits, thats the reason we are leaving k8s and working in a migration to OpenShift en AWS

Pros

  • multiples deploys in the same infraestructure
  • escalability of the solution
  • fastes deployments automatized with ansible

Cons

  • posibility to handle better the hardware limites, if my hardware is very powerfull i cant use it fully because the limites that i explained before

Return on Investment

  • this is what we came to do here in Boston, to talk about a ROI for migrate our products to OpenShift

Other Software Used

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Kubernetes is the answer but, what was the question?

Incentivized
Asad KhanView profile
Technical CARE Specialist in Engineering at Nokia (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I deploy & manage telco workloads on top of Kubernetes. These are called CNFs (Containerized network functions) which are legacy telco applications converted into K8s objects & connected via a networking & storage solution of your choice, managed by K8s. Just like every other industry, Telcos are no exception converting all their legacy applications sitting on proprietary hardware & boxes to COTS hardware & software architectures adapted toward cloud technologies. Kubernetes helps us to manage the CNFs efficiently & gives a better uptime as compared to VM-based architecture. I see the scope of flexibility & easy scaling in K8s as compared to any other technology.

Pros

  • Makes sure that the workload remains UP & running by maintaining the desired state.
  • Gives a lot of flexibility in choosing the networking, storage, monitoring, etc solutions of your choice.
  • The biggest advantage is to upgrade the application with a new version without any downtime.
  • Portability of the code is possible up to a great extent.

Cons

  • Flexibility gives birth to complexity & therefore designing an application on K8s is also complex.
  • Writing Yaml manifests manually & then validating them for errors is a pain that should be worked upon with a solution that can write YAMLs & Helm charts in the background with the user designing the application on a GUI-based sketch. Just like they do in OpenStack.
  • The overall approach of operations should be shifted from CLI to GUI-based for ease of use.
  • Due to a lot of objects & new concepts, the learning curve is really flat i.e. slow.
  • Adding GUI-based operations like finding the exact point causing latency OR showing the POD consuming the highest CPU/RAM would be of great help.

Most Important Features

  • Upgrade without downtime
  • Quick scaling
  • Redundancy & uptime
  • Flexibility to choose the various CNI & CSI options.

Return on Investment

  • Reduced downtime by more than 50%.
  • Increased upgrade frequency by 30%.
  • Avoided management escalations by 45%.

Alternatives Considered

Red Hat OpenStack Platform

Other Software Used

Red Hat OpenStack Platform, CentOS Linux, Nuage Networks Virtualized Services Platform (VSP)