Docker Swarm vs Google Kubernetes Engine

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.

Google Kubernetes Engine is a managed environment for running containerized applications. It manages the Kubernetes control-plane life cycle for each cluster, from creation to deletion. Teams using Autopilot can hand node provisioning, scaling, scheduling and infrastructure management to Google, while users who prefer can manage nodes themselves. Autopilot also includes automatic capacity right-sizing and per-pod pricing. GKE supports GPU and TPU workloads and connects with AI Hypercomputer for machine-learning and high-performance computing. The product page states that clusters can reach 65,000 nodes. Security features include visibility into configuration issues and risks, agentless scanning for critical vulnerabilities, workload isolation through GKE Sandbox and hardware-based encryption for data in use with Confidential GKE Nodes. Fleets and Teams help organize clusters and workloads across teams. It also supports conformant attached Kubernetes clusters and says applications can run unmodified on on-premises hardware or in public cloud. Windows Server node images and containers are unavailable in Autopilot. A free tier and trial are listed, with a $9/mo starting price.