Best Container Orchestration Software for Docker

Google Cloud Run simplifies the challenges of container orchestration, enabling developers to deploy applications effortlessly without the need to set up and manage Kubernetes clusters. While it autonomously manages container orchestration, Cloud Run also integrates with Kubernetes for those who prefer a more hands-on approach with greater control and customization options. Its features, including automatic scaling and load balancing, allow containerized applications to adapt seamlessly to varying traffic demands, making it a prime option for developers seeking a hassle-free solution. New users can take advantage of $300 in free credits to test how Cloud Run automates container orchestration, significantly reducing the operational burden and eliminating the necessity for users to handle orchestration tools on their own. With its serverless framework, Cloud Run adeptly supports a wide range of containerized applications, from the simplest to the most complex, all while maintaining scalability.

Kasm Workspaces streams your workplace environment directly to your web browser…on any device and from any location. Kasm is revolutionizing the way businesses deliver digital workspaces. We use our open-source web native container streaming technology to create a modern devops delivery of Desktop as a Service, application streaming, and browser isolation. Kasm is more than a service. It is a platform that is highly configurable and has a robust API that can be customized to your needs at any scale. Workspaces can be deployed wherever the work is. It can be deployed on-premise (including Air-Gapped Networks), in the cloud (Public and Private), or in a hybrid.

Portainer Business makes managing containers easy. It is designed to be deployed from the data centre to the edge and works with Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes. It is trusted by more than 500K users. With its super-simple GUI and its comprehensive Kube-compatible API, Portainer Business makes it easy for anyone to deploy and manage container-based applications, triage container-related issues, set up automate Git-based workflows and build CaaS environments that end users love to use. Portainer Business works with all K8s distros and can be deployed on prem and/or in the cloud. It is designed to be used in team environments where there are multiple users and multiple clusters. The product incorporates a range of security features - including RBAC, OAuth integration and logging, which makes it suitable for use in large, complex production environments. For platform managers responsible for delivering a self-service CaaS environment, Portainer includes a suite of features that help control what users can / can't do and significantly reduces the risks associated with running containers in prod. Portainer Business is fully supported and includes a comprehensive onboarding experience that ensures you get up and running.

SaltStack is an intelligent IT automation platform that can manage, secure, and optimize any infrastructure--on-prem, in the cloud, or at the edge. It is built on an event-driven automation engine that detects and responds intelligently to any system. This makes it a powerful solution for managing complex environments. SaltStack's new SecOps offering can detect security flaws and mis-configured systems. This powerful automation can detect and fix any issue quickly, allowing you and your team to keep your infrastructure secure, compliant, and up to date. Comply and Protect are both part of the SecOps suite. Comply scans for compliance with CIS, DISA, STIG, NIST and PCI standards. Also, scan your operating system for vulnerabilities and update it with patches and patches.

Stakkr serves as a tool for Docker recompose, simplifying the creation and management of service stacks, particularly useful in web development scenarios. With its configuration file, users can set up necessary services, allowing Stakkr to automatically link and initiate everything. Operating solely through the command line interface, it stands as a viable alternative to Vagrant. If you're familiar with Docker, you understand the challenge of constructing a comprehensive environment with interconnected services, which typically requires either manual configuration or the use of docker-compose. While docker-compose is often the preferred method, it necessitates frequent adjustments for different environments, including parameter changes, image selections, and mastering the command line tool, making it somewhat inflexible and challenging for newcomers. Stakkr addresses these hurdles by offering an easy-to-use configuration file alongside a set list of services that can be expanded with plugins, streamlining the environment-building process. Moreover, it enhances user experience by facilitating seamless control directly through the command line, ultimately simplifying the Docker usage experience for developers. With Stakkr, setting up environments becomes a more efficient and less daunting task.

You can use your favorite debugging software to locally troubleshoot your Kubernetes services. Telepresence, an open-source tool, allows you to run one service locally and connect it to a remote Kubernetes cluster. Telepresence was initially developed by Ambassador Labs, which creates open-source development tools for Kubernetes such as Ambassador and Forge. We welcome all contributions from the community. You can help us by submitting an issue, pull request or reporting a bug. Join our active Slack group to ask questions or inquire about paid support plans. Telepresence is currently under active development. Register to receive updates and announcements. You can quickly debug locally without waiting for a container to be built/push/deployed. Ability to use their favorite local tools such as debugger, IDE, etc. Ability to run large-scale programs that aren't possible locally.

Our platform allows you create distributed coding and data science processes with contractors, freelancers, and developers located anywhere. They work on their own devices, while auditing your data and ensuring data security. Strong Network has created a multi-cloud platform we call Virtual Workspace Infrastructure. It allows companies to securely unify their access to their global data science and coding processes via a simple web browser. The VWI platform is an integral component of their DevSecOps process. It doesn't require integration with existing CI/CD pipelines. Process security is focused on data, code, and other critical resources. The platform automates the principles and implementation of Zero-Trust Architecture, protecting the most valuable IP assets of the company.

Bacula Enterprise offers a single platform that provides cloud backup and recovery software for the Modern Data Center. Bacula Enterprise backup & recovery software is ideal for medium and large businesses. It offers unique innovation, modern architecture and business value benefits, as well as low cost of ownership. Bacula Enterprise corporate backup software solution uses unique technologies that increase the interoperability of Bacula Enterprise into many IT environments, such as managed service providers, software vendors, cloud providers, enterprise data centers, and cloud providers. Bacula Enterprise is used by thousands of organizations around the world in mission-critical environments such as NASA, Texas A&M University and Unicredit. Bacula offers more security features than other vendors and advanced hybrid Cloud connectivity to Amazon S3, Google, Oracle, and many others.

Harpoon is an intuitive drag-and-drop tool designed for Kubernetes that allows users to deploy software within seconds. Whether you are just starting your journey with Kubernetes or seeking an efficient way to master it, Harpoon equips you with all the necessary features for effective deployment and configuration of your applications using this leading container orchestration platform, all without writing any code. The platform's visual interface makes it accessible for anyone to launch production-ready software effortlessly. You can easily manage simple or advanced enterprise-level cloud deployments, enabling you to deploy and configure software while autoscaling Kubernetes without the need for code or configuration scripts. With a single click, you can swiftly search for and find any commercial or open-source software available and deploy it to the cloud. Moreover, before launching any applications or services, Harpoon conducts automated security scripts to safeguard your cloud provider account. You can seamlessly connect Harpoon to your source code repository from anywhere and establish an automated deployment pipeline, ensuring a smooth development workflow. This streamlined process not only saves time but also enhances productivity, making Harpoon an essential tool for developers.

Introducing a self-service development platform tailored for your applications, databases, and various tasks. You can begin with a single workload and effortlessly expand to manage hundreds, utilizing either compute or GPUs. Enhance every phase from code push to production with customizable self-service workflows, pipelines, templates, and GitOps practices. Safely launch preview, staging, and production environments while benefiting from built-in observability tools, backups, restoration capabilities, and rollback options. Northflank integrates flawlessly with your preferred tools, supporting any technology stack you choose. Regardless of whether you operate on Northflank’s secure infrastructure or utilize your own cloud account, you will enjoy the same outstanding developer experience, alongside complete control over your data residency, deployment regions, security measures, and cloud costs. By harnessing Kubernetes as its operating system, Northflank provides the advantages of a cloud-native environment without the associated complexities. Whether you opt for Northflank’s straightforward cloud or connect to your GKE, EKS, AKS, or even bare-metal setups, you can achieve a managed platform experience within minutes, thus optimizing your development workflow. This flexibility ensures that your projects can scale efficiently while maintaining robust performance across diverse environments.

Mesos operates on principles similar to those of the Linux kernel, yet it functions at a different abstraction level. This Mesos kernel is deployed on each machine and offers APIs for managing resources and scheduling tasks for applications like Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, and Elasticsearch across entire cloud infrastructures and data centers. It includes native capabilities for launching containers using Docker and AppC images. Additionally, it allows both cloud-native and legacy applications to coexist within the same cluster through customizable scheduling policies. Developers can utilize HTTP APIs to create new distributed applications, manage the cluster, and carry out monitoring tasks. Furthermore, Mesos features an integrated Web UI that allows users to observe the cluster's status and navigate through container sandboxes efficiently. Overall, Mesos provides a versatile and powerful framework for managing diverse workloads in modern computing environments.

Aptible provides a seamless solution to implement the essential security measures required for regulatory compliance and customer audits. With its Aptible Deploy feature, you can effortlessly maintain adherence to compliance standards while fulfilling customer audit expectations. The platform ensures that your databases, traffic, and certificates are securely encrypted, meeting all necessary encryption mandates. Data is automatically backed up every 24 hours, and you have the flexibility to initiate a manual backup whenever needed, with a straightforward restoration process that takes just a few clicks. Moreover, comprehensive logs for every deployment, configuration alteration, database tunnel, console operation, and session are generated and preserved. Aptible continuously monitors the EC2 instances within your stacks, looking out for potential security threats such as unauthorized SSH access, rootkit infections, file integrity issues, and privilege escalation attempts. Additionally, the dedicated Aptible Security Team is available around the clock to promptly investigate and address any security incidents that may arise, ensuring your systems remain safeguarded. This proactive approach allows you to focus on your core business while leaving security in expert hands.

The Nebula container orchestrator is designed to empower developers and operations teams to manage IoT devices similarly to distributed Docker applications. Its primary goal is to serve as a Docker orchestrator not only for IoT devices but also for distributed services like CDN or edge computing, potentially spanning thousands or even millions of devices globally, all while being fully open-source and free to use. As an open-source initiative focused on Docker orchestration, Nebula efficiently manages extensive clusters by enabling each component of the project to scale according to demand. This innovative project facilitates the simultaneous updating of tens of thousands of IoT devices around the world with just a single API call, reinforcing its mission to treat IoT devices like their Dockerized counterparts. Furthermore, the versatility and scalability of Nebula make it a promising solution for the evolving landscape of IoT and distributed computing.

Marathon serves as a robust container orchestration platform that integrates seamlessly with Mesosphere’s Datacenter Operating System (DC/OS) and Apache Mesos, ensuring high availability through its active/passive clustering and leader election mechanism, which guarantees continuous uptime. It supports multiple container runtimes, offering first-class integration for Mesos containers utilizing cgroups as well as Docker, making it adaptable to various development environments. Additionally, Marathon facilitates the deployment of stateful applications by allowing persistent storage volumes to be linked to your apps, which is particularly beneficial for running databases such as MySQL and Postgres with storage managed by Mesos. The platform boasts an intuitive and powerful user interface, along with a range of service discovery and load balancing options to suit diverse needs. Health checks are implemented to monitor application performance via HTTP or TCP checks, ensuring reliability. Users can also set up event subscriptions by providing an HTTP endpoint to receive notifications, which can aid in integrating with external load balancers. Lastly, metrics can be queried in JSON format at the /metrics endpoint, while also being capable of integration with popular systems like Graphite, StatsD, DataDog, or scraped using Prometheus, allowing for comprehensive monitoring and analysis of application performance. This combination of features positions Marathon as a versatile tool for managing containerized applications effectively.

Helios serves as a Docker orchestration platform designed for the deployment and management of containers across a wide array of servers. It offers both an HTTP API and a command-line interface, enabling users to interact seamlessly with the servers that host their containers. In addition, Helios maintains a record of significant events within your cluster, capturing details such as deployments, restarts, and version updates. The binary version of Helios is specifically compiled for Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, though it is also compatible with any platform that supports at least Java 8 and a current version of Maven 3. Users can utilize helios-solo to set up a local environment featuring both a Helios master and agent. Helios adopts a pragmatic approach; while it may not aim to address every problem at once, it is committed to delivering solid performance with the features it currently offers. Consequently, certain functionalities, like resource limits and dynamic scheduling, are not yet implemented. At this stage, the focus is primarily on solidifying CI/CD use cases and the related tools, but there are plans to eventually incorporate dynamic scheduling, composite jobs, and other advanced features in the future. The evolution of Helios reflects its dedication to continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs.

An entirely automated DevOps platform designed for the seamless distribution of reliable software releases from development to production. Expedite the onboarding of DevOps initiatives by managing users, resources, and permissions to enhance deployment velocity. Confidently implement updates by proactively detecting open-source vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance with licensing regulations. Maintain uninterrupted operations throughout your DevOps process with High Availability and active/active clustering tailored for enterprises. Seamlessly manage your DevOps ecosystem using pre-built native integrations and those from third-party providers. Fully equipped for enterprise use, it offers flexibility in deployment options, including on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid solutions that can scale alongside your organization. Enhance the speed, dependability, and security of software updates and device management for IoT applications on a large scale. Initiate new DevOps projects within minutes while easily integrating team members, managing resources, and establishing storage limits, enabling quicker coding and collaboration. This comprehensive platform empowers your team to focus on innovation without the constraints of traditional deployment challenges.

Data-driven computational pipelines. Nextflow allows for reproducible and scalable scientific workflows by using software containers. It allows adaptation of scripts written in most common scripting languages. Fluent DSL makes it easy to implement and deploy complex reactive and parallel workflows on clusters and clouds. Nextflow was built on the belief that Linux is the lingua Franca of data science. Nextflow makes it easier to create a computational pipeline that can be used to combine many tasks. You can reuse existing scripts and tools. Additionally, you don't have to learn a new language to use Nextflow. Nextflow supports Docker, Singularity and other containers technology. This, together with integration of the GitHub Code-sharing Platform, allows you write self-contained pipes, manage versions, reproduce any configuration quickly, and allow you to integrate the GitHub code-sharing portal. Nextflow acts as an abstraction layer between the logic of your pipeline and its execution layer.

Centurion is a deployment tool specifically designed for Docker, facilitating the retrieval of containers from a Docker registry to deploy them across a network of hosts while ensuring the appropriate environment variables, host volume mappings, and port configurations are in place. It inherently supports rolling deployments, simplifying the process of delivering applications to Docker servers within our production infrastructure. The tool operates through a two-stage deployment framework, where the initial build process pushes a container to the registry, followed by Centurion transferring the container from the registry to the Docker fleet. Integration with the registry is managed via the Docker command line tools, allowing compatibility with any existing solutions they support through conventional registry methods. For those unfamiliar with registries, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with their functionality prior to deploying with Centurion. The development of this tool is conducted openly, welcoming community feedback through issues and pull requests, and is actively maintained by a dedicated team at New Relic. Additionally, this collaborative approach ensures continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs.

The latest iterations of Docker feature swarm mode, which allows for the native management of a cluster known as a swarm, composed of multiple Docker Engines. Using the Docker CLI, one can easily create a swarm, deploy various application services within it, and oversee the swarm's operational behaviors. The Docker Engine integrates cluster management seamlessly, enabling users to establish a swarm of Docker Engines for service deployment without needing any external orchestration tools. With a decentralized architecture, the Docker Engine efficiently manages node role differentiation at runtime rather than at deployment, allowing for the simultaneous deployment of both manager and worker nodes from a single disk image. Furthermore, the Docker Engine adopts a declarative service model, empowering users to specify the desired state of their application's service stack comprehensively. This streamlined approach not only simplifies the deployment process but also enhances the overall efficiency of managing complex applications.

Utilize the advanced container operating system to deploy and oversee your containers effectively. By leveraging immutable infrastructure, you can seamlessly deploy and scale your applications that are containerized. Project Atomic consists of several components, including Atomic Host, Team Silverblue, and a suite of container management tools designed for cloud-native environments. Atomic Host enables the establishment of immutable infrastructure across numerous servers, whether in a private or public cloud setting. With options such as Fedora Atomic Host, CentOS Atomic Host, and Red Hat Atomic Host, users can select the edition that best meets their platform and support requirements. To accommodate both stability and the introduction of new features, we offer various releases of Atomic Host for your selection. Additionally, Team Silverblue is dedicated to providing a consistent and immutable infrastructure for an enhanced desktop experience, ensuring that users enjoy a reliable and up-to-date system. This multifaceted approach allows for flexibility in how you manage your containerized applications across different environments.

Kubernetes can be run in production using the #1 Kubernetes platform. It offers persistent storage, backup, data security, capacity management, and DR. You can easily backup, restore, and migrate Kubernetes applications to any cloud or data centre. Portworx Enterprise Storage Platform provides end-to-end storage, data management, and security for all Kubernetes projects. This includes container-based CaaS and DBaaS as well as SaaS and Disaster Recovery. Container-granular storage, disaster recovery and data security will all be available to your apps. Multi-cloud migrations are also possible. You can easily solve enterprise requirements for Kubernetes data service. Your users can easily access a cloud-like DbaaS without losing control. Operational complexity is eliminated by scaling the backend data services that power your SaaS app. With a single command, add DR to any Kubernetes application. All your Kubernetes apps can be easily backed up and restored.

Test Kitchen serves as a testing framework that allows the execution of infrastructure code in a controlled environment across multiple platforms. It employs a driver plugin system to facilitate code execution on a variety of cloud services and virtualization options, including Vagrant, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, and Docker, among others. The tool comes pre-configured with support for several testing frameworks such as Chef InSpec, Serverspec, and Bats. In addition, it offers compatibility with Chef Infra workflows, allowing for cookbook dependency management through Berkshelf or Policyfiles, or even by simply including a cookbooks/ directory for automatic recognition. As a result, Test Kitchen is widely adopted by community cookbooks managed by Chef and has become the preferred tool for integration testing in the cookbook ecosystem. This widespread usage underscores its importance in ensuring that infrastructure code is robust and reliable across diverse environments.

What makes azk stand out? Azk is open source software (Apache 2.0) and will remain that way indefinitely. It offers an agnostic approach with an exceptionally gentle learning curve, allowing you to continue utilizing the same development tools you are accustomed to. With just a few commands, you can transition from hours or days of setup to a matter of minutes. The magic of azk lies in its ability to execute concise and straightforward recipe files (Azkfile.js), which specify the environments to be installed and configured. Its performance is impressively efficient, ensuring your machine hardly notices its presence. By utilizing containers rather than virtual machines, azk provides superior performance while consuming fewer physical resources. Built on Docker, the leading open-source engine for container management, azk ensures that sharing an Azkfile.js guarantees complete consistency across different development environments, minimizing the risk of bugs during deployment. Are you unsure whether all the developers on your team are running the most current version of the development environment? With azk, you can easily verify and maintain synchronization across all machines.