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Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes: Definition & Key Differences

Both Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes are used for managing cloud apps, but they offer different sets of features. To help you better understand their ideal use cases and ease of use, we go over what each service has to offer in this Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes guide.

Adeyomola KazeemAleksander HougenSimona Ivanovski

Written by Adeyomola Kazeem (Writer)

Reviewed by Aleksander Hougen (Co-Chief Editor)

Facts checked by Simona Ivanovski (Fact-Checker, Formatter)

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Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes

Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes

  • Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform for managing the life cycle of stateful applications using programming models.
  • Kubernetes is an open-source orchestration system used to automate the life cycle of container applications.
  • The main difference between Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes is that Azure Service Fabric is more feature-rich out of the box, offering comprehensive application management features and deeper integration with Microsoft technologies. On the other hand, Kubernetes has broader third-party support and offers a consistent and unified experience across various platforms.

Facts & Expert Analysis: Differences Between Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes

  • Programming models: Azure Service Fabric programming models make it easier for programmers to write applications that readily take advantage of the platform’s distributed systems features, such as partitioning.
  • Low-latency statefulness: Azure Service Fabric does not need external data stores; it allows services to store their states locally, which contributes to its low-latency access to state data.
  • Container focus: Unlike Service Fabric, which has some influence on your application’s code through its programming models, Kubernetes has no influence on code. Instead, Kubernetes focuses on creating and managing an environment for running containers.

Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes are among the popular options for container orchestration and life cycle management in microservices architecture in cloud computing. Azure Service Fabric offers a higher level of abstraction compared to Kubernetes, so it’s much easier to start using. Meanwhile, Kubernetes offers a higher level of customization.

Even though they generally serve the same purpose and have similar capabilities, their setup and operations are quite different. This guide compares Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes, digging into their differences as well as the pros and cons.

Azure Service Fabric vs Kubernetes at a Glance

Azure Service Fabric and Kubernetes orchestrate containers, scale resources and support statefulness. However, the extent of their state management, monitoring and abstraction sets them apart. The table below highlights these differences and some similarities.

Feature:Azure Service FabricKubernetes
StatefulnessHas various built-in features for state support, including automatic state backup and restore.While it supports statefulness using StatefulSets and Persistent Volumes, it requires third-party tools for automatic state backup and restore.
ScalingScales horizontally at service, application, partition and node levels. Can also scale vertically if the cluster is healthy.Can scale horizontally at pod and node levels. Can also scale vertically using resize policies.
SupportSmaller community of users, so support is primarily from the Microsoft Azure team.Has a larger ecosystem, so you can find support on various public platforms.
Application modelSupported application models include containers, reliable actors, reliable services and guest executables.Works with any application that can be containerized.
FocusManaging and deploying stateful applications in microservices using programming models.Automating the deployment and management of the life cycle of containerized applications.
Monitoring & diagnosticsOffers three layers of monitoring: application, cluster and infrastructure monitoring through its integration with Azure Monitor and Application Insights.Examines pods, containers, services and clusters. It offers two APIs for examining resources: a resource metrics pipeline and a more detailed full metrics pipeline.
AbstractionMore abstraction, making configuration less demanding.Less abstraction, requiring more effort to set up. Managed Kubernetes services reduce the burden of configuration.
PortabilityService Fabric is cloud agnostic, so you can use it on non-Azure public clouds and on-premises. However, its management and integration with other tools is more seamless on Azure.Kubernetes is also cloud agnostic but with a fairly uniform experience across different cloud platforms.

What Is Azure Service Fabric?

Azure Service Fabric is a platform that streamlines the packaging, deployment and management of applications in microservices architecture on distributed systems. It is used for container orchestration, state management in microservices and application life cycle management.

service fabric
A Service Fabric cluster offers less abstraction than a Service Fabric managed cluster.

Although it is an Azure product, Azure Service Fabric is somewhat cloud agnostic. It is compatible with Windows and Linux operating systems, and you can use it with all major cloud providers and on-premises. Although it deals with containerized applications, it also allows you to deploy existing applications as guest executables.

Azure Service Fabric Pros

The pros of Azure Service Fabric center on its abstraction and deep integration with Microsoft technology:

Azure Service Fabric Cons

Despite being helpful, Azure Service Fabric’s abstraction, programming models and Microsoft integration can be limiting. 

What’s Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is an open-source container orchestration tool. It is used to automate container deployment and scaling in a distributed cluster of servers. It also manages containerized application life cycles, facilitating processes such as self-healing, service discovery and batch execution. (See how it compares to the open-source containerized system Docker in our Kubernetes vs Docker guide.)

k8s
Kubernetes is typically accessed from a command-line interface using Kubectl.

Kubernetes supports Windows and Linux and is cloud agnostic, so you can use it on any public cloud platform. In fact, many public cloud platforms offer managed Kubernetes platforms, which are alternatives for when you want to abstract a configuration. 

Kubernetes Pros

Kubernetes’ customizability, minimal abstraction and open-source nature are crucial to its pros, as discussed below.

Kubernetes Cons

The downsides of Kubernetes are mostly related to its low level of abstraction and relative shortage of built-in features.

Kubernetes vs Azure Service Fabric: Key Differences

The key differences between Kubernetes and Azure Service Fabric include state management, ease of configuration, programming models and monitoring. 

  1. State management: While both support stateful deployments, Azure Service Fabric offers extensive state management, including automatic state backup and restore. With Kubernetes, you need tools like Velero or Kasten K10 for automatic state backup.
  2. Programming models: Unlike Kubernetes, which has no influence on application code, Azure Service Fabric comes with programming models, which are frameworks that simplify application development in microservices.
  3. Monitoring: Service Fabric’s monitoring is more robust and offers more granularity than the built-in Kubernetes monitoring system. That said, you can enhance monitoring on Kubernetes with tools like Grafana.
  4. Application type: Kubernetes supports only containerized applications, but Service Fabric supports both containerized and non-containerized applications.
  5. Ease of configuration: Since it takes care of most of the infrastructure management, Azure Service Fabric is relatively easier to configure, especially on Azure. Kubernetes generally requires more infrastructure management, so it isn’t as easy to configure.
  6. Cloud portability: Although Service Fabric and Kubernetes are cloud agnostic, Service Fabric is best used with other Azure services. Kubernetes, on the other hand, runs consistently across different platforms.
  7. Ecosystem: Azure Service Fabric has a smaller ecosystem, hence its fewer third-party integrations. However, Kubernetes has a large ecosystem and more integrations.

Final Thoughts

Compared to Kubernetes, Azure Service Fabric offers more features out of the box. However, Kubernetes is more flexible, customizable and portable, and it has a broader range of third-party integrations.

You can see how more cloud platforms compare in our cloud computing platform comparison guide.

Would you opt for Kubernetes’ customizability and flexibility over Service Fabric even though it requires more configuration? In your experience, which service has given you better results: managed Kubernetes services or traditional Kubernetes? Leave a comment below with your thoughts. Thank you for reading.

FAQ: Kubernetes vs Azure Service Fabric

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