Read a story this past week in TechCrunch, Mesosphere adds Kubernetes support, about how Mesosphere with their own container orchestration software (called Marathon) will now support Google Kubernetes clusters and container orchestration services.
Mesosphere uses their own DC/OS (data center/operating system) to provide service discovery, resource management and networking for container cluster deployments across multiple machines.
DC/OS sounds similar to Kubo discussed in last week’s post, VMworld2017 forecast, cloudy with high chance of containers. Although Kubo was an open source development led by Pivotal to run Kubernetes clusters.
Kubernetes (and Docker) wins
This is indicative of the impact Kubernetes cluster operations is having on the container space.For now, the only holdout in container orchestration without Kubernetes is Docker with their Docker Swarm Engine.
Why add Kubernetes when Mesosphere already had a great container cluster orchestration service? It seems as the container market is maturing, more and more applications are being developed for Kubernetes clusters rather than other container orchestration software.
Although Mesosphere is the current leader in container orchestration both in containers run and revenue (according to their CEO), the move to Kubernetes clusters is likely to accelerate their market adoption/revenues and ultimately help keep them in the lead.
Marathon still lives on
It turns out that Marathon also orchestrates non-container application deployments.
Marathon can also support statefull apps like database machines with persistent storage (unlike Docker containers, stateless apps). These are closer to more typical enterprise applications. This is probably why Mesosphere has done so well up to now.
Marathon also supports both Docker and Mesos containers. Mesos containers depend on Apache Mesos, a specially developed distributed system’s kernel based on Linux for containers.
So Mesosphere will continue to fund development and support for Marathon, even while it rolls out Kubernetes. This will allow them to continue to support their customer base and move them forward into the Kubernetes age.
~~~~
I see an eventual need for both stateless and statefull apps in the enterprise data center. And that might just be Mesosphere’s key value proposition – the ability to support apps of the future (containers-stateless) and apps of today (statefull) within the same DC/OS.
Picture credit(s): Enormous container ship by Ruth Hartnup
