Best Cluster Management Software

Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a fully managed container orchestration service. Customers such as Duolingo, Samsung, GE, and Cook Pad use ECS to run their most sensitive and mission-critical applications because of its security, reliability, and scalability. ECS is a great choice to run containers for several reasons. First, you can choose to run your ECS clusters using AWS Fargate, which is serverless compute for containers. Fargate removes the need to provision and manage servers, lets you specify and pay for resources per application, and improves security through application isolation by design. Second, ECS is used extensively within Amazon to power services such as Amazon SageMaker, AWS Batch, Amazon Lex, and Amazon.com’s recommendation engine, ensuring ECS is tested extensively for security, reliability, and availability.

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Kubernetes builds upon 15 years of experience of running production workloads at Google, combined with best-of-breed ideas and practices from the community. Designed on the same principles that allows Google to run billions of containers a week, Kubernetes can scale without increasing your ops team. Whether testing locally or running a global enterprise, Kubernetes flexibility grows with you to deliver your applications consistently and easily no matter how complex your need is. Kubernetes is open source giving you the freedom to take advantage of on-premises, hybrid, or public cloud infrastructure, letting you effortlessly move workloads to where it matters to you.

The Kubernetes platform for big ideas. Empower developers to innovate and ship faster with the leading hybrid cloud, enterprise container platform. Red Hat OpenShift offers automated installation, upgrades, and lifecycle management throughout the container stack—the operating system, Kubernetes and cluster services, and applications—on any cloud. Red Hat OpenShift helps teams build with speed, agility, confidence, and choice. Code in production mode anywhere you choose to build. Get back to doing work that matters. Red Hat OpenShift is focused on security at every level of the container stack and throughout the application lifecycle. It includes long-term, enterprise support from one of the leading Kubernetes contributors and open source software companies. Support the most demanding workloads including AI/ML, Java, data analytics, databases, and more. Automate deployment and life-cycle management with our vast ecosystem of technology partners.

Welcome to K8 Studio, your ultimate cross-platform client IDE for effortless Kubernetes cluster management. Seamlessly deploy to popular platforms such as EKS, GKE, AKS, or your dedicated bare metal setup. Experience the power of connecting to your cluster with an intuitive interface, providing a visual representation of nodes, pods, services, and more. Gain instant access to logs, detailed element descriptions, and a bash terminal, all with a simple click. Elevate your Kubernetes experience with K8Studio's user-friendly features. The grid view allows for a comprehensive tabular display of all Kubernetes objects. The left bar enables the selection of specific object types, and this view is entirely interactive and updated in real time. Users can seamlessly search and filter objects by namespace, and rearrange columns. Organizes workloads, services, ingresses, and volumes by namespace and instance. Visualize object connections for a rapid pod count and status check.

Most Kubernetes platforms let you spin up and manage Kubernetes clusters. Loft doesn't. Loft is an advanced control plane that runs on top of your existing Kubernetes clusters to add multi-tenancy and self-service capabilities to these clusters to get the full value out of Kubernetes beyond cluster management. Loft provides a powerful UI and CLI but under the hood, it is 100% Kubernetes, so you can control everything via kubectl and the Kubernetes API, which guarantees great integration with existing cloud-native tooling. Building open-source software is part of our DNA. Loft Labs is CNCF and Linux Foundation member. Loft allows companies to empower their employees to spin up low-cost, low-overhead Kubernetes environments for a variety of use cases.

Easily handle multicluster scenarios for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters such as workload propagation, north-south load balancing (for traffic flowing into member clusters), and upgrade orchestration across multiple clusters. Fleet cluster enables centralized management of all your clusters at scale. The managed hub cluster takes care of the upgrades and Kubernetes cluster configuration for you. Kubernetes configuration propagation lets you use policies and overrides to disseminate objects across fleet member clusters. North-south load balancer orchestrates traffic flow across workloads deployed in multiple member clusters of the fleet. Group any combination of your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters to simplify multi-cluster workflows like Kubernetes configuration propagation and multi-cluster networking. Fleet requires a hub Kubernetes cluster to store configurations for placement policy and multicluster networking.

Mesos is built using the same principles as the Linux kernel, only at a different level of abstraction. The Mesos kernel runs on every machine and provides applications (e.g., Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, Elasticsearch) with API’s for resource management and scheduling across entire datacenter and cloud environments. Native support for launching containers with Docker and AppC images.Support for running cloud native and legacy applications in the same cluster with pluggable scheduling policies. HTTP APIs for developing new distributed applications, for operating the cluster, and for monitoring. Built-in Web UI for viewing cluster state and navigating container sandboxes.

A simple and flexible workload orchestrator to deploy and manage containers and non-containerized applications across on-prem and clouds at scale. Single 35MB binary that integrates into existing infrastructure. Easy to operate on-prem or in the cloud with minimal overhead. Orchestrate applications of any type - not just containers. First class support for Docker, Windows, Java, VMs, and more. Bring orchestration benefits to existing services. Achieve zero downtime deployments, improved resilience, higher resource utilization, and more without containerization. Single command for multi-region, multi-cloud federation. Deploy applications globally to any region using Nomad as a single unified control plane. One single unified workflow for deploying to bare metal or cloud environments. Enable multi-cloud applications with ease. Nomad integrates seamlessly with Terraform, Consul and Vault for provisioning, service networking, and secrets management.

Today's Kubernetes environments need help in scaling, securing and observing modern cloud-native applications. Gloo Mesh, based on the industry's leading Istio service mesh, simplifies multi-cloud and multi-cluster management of service mesh for containers and virtual machines. Gloo Mesh helps platform engineering teams to reduce costs, reduce risks, and improve application agility. Gloo Mesh is a modular component of Gloo Platform. The service mesh allows for application-aware network tasks to be managed independently from the application, adding observability, security, and reliability to distributed applications. By introducing the service mesh to your applications, you can: Simplify the application layer Provide more insights into your traffic Increase the security of your application

Azure Red Hat OpenShift provides highly available, fully managed OpenShift clusters on demand, monitored and operated jointly by Microsoft and Red Hat. Kubernetes is at the core of Red Hat OpenShift. OpenShift brings added-value features to complement Kubernetes, making it a turnkey container platform as a service (PaaS) with a significantly improved developer and operator experience. Highly available, fully managed public and private clusters, automated operations, and over-the-air platform upgrades. Take advantage of the enhanced user interface for application topology and builds in the web console to build, deploy, configure, and visualize containerized applications and cluster resources more easily.

From datacenter to cloud to edge, Rancher lets you deliver Kubernetes-as-a-Service. Rancher is a complete software stack for teams adopting containers. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters, while providing DevOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads. From datacenter to cloud to edge, Rancher's open source software lets you run Kubernetes everywhere. Compare Rancher with other leading Kubernetes management platforms in how they deliver. You don’t need to figure Kubernetes out all on your own. Rancher is open source software, with an enormous community of users. Rancher Labs builds software that helps enterprises deliver Kubernetes-as-a-Service across any infrastructure. When running Kubernetes workloads in mission-critical environments, our community knows that they can turn to us for world-class support.

Current versions of Docker include swarm mode for natively managing a cluster of Docker Engines called a swarm. Use the Docker CLI to create a swarm, deploy application services to a swarm, and manage swarm behavior. Cluster management integrated with Docker Engine: Use the Docker Engine CLI to create a swarm of Docker Engines where you can deploy application services. You don’t need additional orchestration software to create or manage a swarm. Decentralized design: Instead of handling differentiation between node roles at deployment time, the Docker Engine handles any specialization at runtime. You can deploy both kinds of nodes, managers and workers, using the Docker Engine. This means you can build an entire swarm from a single disk image. Declarative service model: Docker Engine uses a declarative approach to let you define the desired state of the various services in your application stack.

Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) is an Oracle-managed container orchestration service that can reduce the time and cost to build modern cloud native applications. Unlike most other vendors, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides Container Engine for Kubernetes as a free service that runs on higher-performance, lower-cost compute shapes. DevOps engineers can use unmodified, open source Kubernetes for application workload portability and to simplify operations with automatic updates and patching. Deploy Kubernetes clusters including the underlying virtual cloud networks, internet gateways, and NAT gateways with a single click. Automate Kubernetes operations with web-based REST API and CLI for all actions including Kubernetes cluster creation, scaling, and operations. Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes does not charge for cluster management. Easily and quickly upgrade container clusters, with zero downtime, to keep them up to date with the latest stable version of Kubernetes.

EKS is community-driven and supports the latest Kubernetes version as well as native Kubernetes cluster management. It is ready-to-use in the form of a plugin to support Tencent Cloud products for storage, networking, load balancing, and more. EKS is built on Tencent Cloud's well-developed virtualization technology and network architecture, providing 99.95% service availability. Tencent Cloud ensures the virtual and network isolation of EKS clusters between users. You can configure network policies for specific products using security groups, network ACL, etc. The serverless framework of EKS ensures higher resource utilization and lower OPS costs. Flexible and efficient auto scaling ensures that EKS only consumes the amount of resources required by the current load. EKS provides solutions that meet different business needs and can be integrated with most Tencent Cloud services, such as CBS, CFS, COS, TencentDB products, VPC and more.

TKE is fully compatible with the entire range of Kubernetes capabilities and has been adapted to Tencent Cloud's fundamental IaaS capabilities such as CVM and CBS. In addition, Tencent Cloud’s Kubernetes-based cloud products such as CBS and CLB support one-click deployment to container clusters for a variety of open source applications, greatly improving deployment efficiency. Thanks to TKE, you can simplify the management of large-scale clusters and management and OPS of distributed applications without having to use cluster management software or design fault-tolerant cluster architecture. Simply launch TKE and specify the tasks you want to run, and then TKE will take care of all of the cluster management tasks, allowing you to focus on developing Dockerized applications.

Amazon EKS Anywhere is a new deployment option for Amazon EKS that enables you to easily create and operate Kubernetes clusters on-premises, including on your own virtual machines (VMs) and bare metal servers. EKS Anywhere provides an installable software package for creating and operating Kubernetes clusters on-premises and automation tooling for cluster lifecycle support. EKS Anywhere brings a consistent AWS management experience to your data center, building on the strengths of Amazon EKS Distro (the same Kubernetes that powers EKS on AWS.) EKS Anywhere saves you the complexity of buying or building your own management tooling to create EKS Distro clusters, configure the operating environment, update software, and handle backup and recovery. EKS Anywhere enables you to automate cluster management, reduce support costs, and eliminate the redundant effort of using multiple open source or 3rd party tools for operating Kubernetes clusters. EKS Anywhere is fully supported by AWS.

CIQ empowers people to do amazing things by providing innovative and stable software infrastructure solutions for all computing needs. From the base operating system, through containers, orchestration, provisioning, computing, and cloud applications, CIQ works with every part of the technology stack to drive solutions for customers and communities with stable, scalable, secure production environments. CIQ is the founding support and services partner of Rocky Linux, and the creator of the next generation federated computing stack. - Rocky Linux, open, Secure Enterprise Linux - Apptainer, application Containers for High Performance Computing - Warewulf, cluster Management and Operating System Provisioning - HPC2.0, the Next Generation of High Performance Computing, a Cloud Native Federated Computing Platform - Traditional HPC, turnkey computing stack for traditional HPC

SUSE Rancher Prime addresses the needs of DevOps teams deploying applications with Kubernetes and IT operations delivering enterprise-critical services. SUSE Rancher Prime supports any CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution. For on-premises workloads, we offer the RKE. We support all the public cloud distributions, including EKS, AKS, and GKE. At the edge, we offer K3s. SUSE Rancher Prime provides simple, consistent cluster operations, including provisioning, version management, visibility and diagnostics, monitoring and alerting, and centralized audit. SUSE Rancher Prime lets you automate processes and applies a consistent set of user access and security policies for all your clusters, no matter where they’re running. SUSE Rancher Prime provides a rich catalogue of services for building, deploying, and scaling containerized applications, including app packaging, CI/CD, logging, monitoring, and service mesh.

K3s is a highly available, certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances. Both ARM64 and ARMv7 are supported with binaries and multiarch images available for both. K3s works great from something as small as a Raspberry Pi to an AWS a1.4xlarge 32GiB server. Lightweight storage backend based on sqlite3 as the default storage mechanism. etcd3, MySQL, Postgres also still available. Secure by default with reasonable defaults for lightweight environments. Simple but powerful “batteries-included” features have been added, such as: a local storage provider, a service load balancer, a Helm controller, and the Traefik ingress controller. Operation of all Kubernetes control plane components is encapsulated in a single binary and process. This allows K3s to automate and manage complex cluster operations like distributing certificates.

Spectro Cloud’s Palette is a comprehensive Kubernetes management platform designed to simplify and unify the deployment, operation, and scaling of Kubernetes clusters across diverse environments—from edge to cloud to data center. It provides full-stack, declarative orchestration, enabling users to blueprint cluster configurations with consistency and flexibility. The platform supports multi-cluster, multi-distro Kubernetes environments, delivering lifecycle management, granular access controls, cost visibility, and optimization. Palette integrates seamlessly with cloud providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and popular Kubernetes services such as EKS, OpenShift, and Rancher. With robust security features including FIPS and FedRAMP compliance, Palette addresses needs of government and regulated industries. It offers flexible deployment options—self-hosted, SaaS, or airgapped—ensuring organizations can choose the best fit for their infrastructure and security requirements.

Deploy and orchestrate applications on a managed Kubernetes platform with centralized, SaaS-based management of distributed applications with a single pane of glass and rich observability. Simplify by managing deployments as one across on-prem, cloud, and edge locations. Achieve effortless management and scaling of applications across multiple k8s clusters (customer sites or F5 Distributed Cloud Regional Edge) with a single Kubernetes compatible API, unlocking the ease of multi-cluster management. Deploy, deliver, and secure applications to all locations as one ”virtual” location. Deploy, secure, and operate distributed applications with uniform production grade Kubernetes no matter the location, from private and public cloud to edge locations. Secure K8s Gateway with zero trust security all the way to the cluster with ingress services with WAAP, service policies management, network, and application firewall.