Docker Swarm vs Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service

Docker Swarm is an open-source, free orchestration mode built into Docker Engine for managing clusters of Docker daemons in production. It is controlled through the Docker CLI and needs no separate orchestration software. Managers maintain a declarative desired state covering replica counts, networks, storage resources, and exposed ports. Services can be replicated across selected nodes or run globally with one task on every node. Overlay networks connect daemons, while an ingress network provides load balancing. Swarm assigns DNS names and supports virtual-IP load balancing or DNS round-robin discovery. Updates can roll out incrementally and roll back to an earlier service version. Nodes authenticate and encrypt communications with mutual TLS, requiring at least TLS 1.2. Overlay application traffic is not encrypted by default; IPsec encryption can reduce performance. Swarm is self-hosted, supports rolling updates and policy controls, and lacks multi-cluster management and autoscaling.

Exoscale Scalable Kubernetes Service (SKS) is a managed Kubernetes service for deploying, scaling and hosting containerized applications in Europe. It is available through web and APIs, with a free Starter Cluster and a Pro Cluster billed hourly; the Pro price is not shown as a numeric amount. Exoscale operates the control plane and provides upgrades, and says fully managed clusters can start in less than one minute. Starter includes a managed control plane, CLI, API, Terraform integration and automatic control-plane patch upgrades. Pro adds a highly available control plane, etcd backups, a 99.95% SLA and Karpenter autoscaling. Network Load Balancers handle ingress, while the CSI driver attaches block or object storage for stateful workloads. Authentication, network policies, role-based access and Kubernetes Audit provide control and visibility. Every release passes CNCF conformance tests. SKS is vanilla Kubernetes, so monitoring, GitOps and security tools are not installed by default. Customers receive ticket support, with paid plans offering faster responses and additional coverage.