DevOps: What are Container Orchestration trade-offs?

Comparison of orchestration approaches:

| Criterion | Docker Compose | Docker Swarm | Kubernetes | Nomad | |---------|---------------|--------------|------------|-------| | Complexity | Low | Medium | High | Medium | | Scale | 1 host | 1000 nodes | 5000+ nodes | 10000+ nodes | | Auto-heal | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Rolling update | Limited | Yes | Advanced | Yes | | Service mesh | No | No | Yes | Consul | | Community | Large | Small | Huge | Medium |

Kubernetes:

• Pros: industry standard, ecosystem (Helm, Operators), declarative.
• Cons: complexity, learning curve, overkill for simple applications.

Docker Compose:

• Pros: simplicity, quick start, IDE support.
• Cons: single host, no autoscaling, no HA.

Docker Swarm:

• Pros: built into Docker, simple setup.
• Cons: little development, small ecosystem.

HashiCorp Nomad:

• Pros: simple, multi-runtime (containers + VMs + binaries).
• Cons: smaller community than K8s.

When to choose what:

• Microservices, 10+ services → Kubernetes.
• Monolith on 1-2 servers → Docker Compose.
• Need multi-runtime → Nomad.
• Quick PaaS → Managed (EKS, GKE, AKS).