Comparisons anchored on Kubernetes, the Apache-2.0 CNCF container orchestration platform that DeployOpen runs on virtual machines and bare metal, covering control plane and etcd layout.
Which highly available control plane topology to build with kubeadm: stacked etcd, with an etcd member on every control plane node, or an external etcd cluster on its own hosts. Covers minimum host counts, the coupled failure risk of stacked etcd, what external etcd costs in hardware and operations, and the kubeadm default.
Rancher's two Kubernetes distributions compared: lightweight K3s with SQLite by default and bundled Traefik and Flannel, against RKE2 built for CIS benchmark and FIPS 140-2 compliance, for edge, regulated and general-purpose self-hosted clusters.
Three ways to install self-managed Kubernetes on VMs or bare metal: upstream kubeadm that only bootstraps, K3s with batteries included, and security-hardened RKE2, compared on defaults, datastore, add-ons, compliance and day-two upgrade effort.
Running your own Kubernetes control plane on VMs or bare metal against managed EKS and AKS: published control plane fees and SLA tiers, extended support charges, data residency and air-gapped needs, and the team effort that self-management adds.
The two leading Kubernetes CNI plugins compared: eBPF-based Cilium (CNCF graduated) with kube-proxy replacement, Hubble and mesh features, against Tigera's Calico with eBPF, Linux, Windows and VPP data planes, on network policy, observability and support.
Envoy-based Istio against Linkerd and its own lightweight linkerd2-proxy: features, sidecar and ambient data planes, resource cost, and the release question that changes the decision, since Linkerd's open source project ships only edge releases and stable builds come from vendors.
Choosing Istio's data plane: per-pod Envoy sidecars against ambient mode's node-level L4 proxy and optional waypoints, on resource cost, published latency overhead, L7 features, multi-cluster limits and migration of an existing sidecar mesh.
Kubernetes against Swarm mode built into Docker Engine for teams with a handful of servers: scheduling, scaling and rolling updates, ecosystem, operational load and when Swarm's simplicity is worth the smaller tool set.
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