While Docker has emerged as a defacto standard for containers, users have multiple choices when it comes to deploying and managing containerized application environments. There are a variety of open-source and commercial solutions for on-premises, cloud and hybrid cloud deployments offering different capabilities and feature sets.

A key decision faced by DevOps managers is the choice of an orchestration solution for Docker workloads. Orchestration solutions are evolving at a rapid clip. In this paper, we take a detailed look at two popular container orchestration engines: Docker Native Orchestration (aka Swarm) and Kubernetes. Both are good choices depending on an organization’s goals, the environment, and the types of applications being deployed. While we attempt to look at each orchestration framework objectively, in places it’s helpful to compare how a feature is implemented in one framework vs. another, and how implementation details vary.

After reviewing each framework, we provide a short comparative summary, discuss how each orchestration solution is implemented in Rancher, and offer some guidance around what orchestration solution may be appropriate when.