Related Technologies	Related Topics
Computer Networks	Docker	Dev Tools

Containerization Technologies

System containers (lightweight VM-like):
LXC/LXD

Container runtimes / clients:
Docker | Podman

Local multi-service composition: Docker Compose | Kubernetes

Full Kubernetes distributions / enterprise & managed K8s:
OpenShift
EKS (Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service)
GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine)
AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)

Lightweight/local Kubernetes for dev & edge:
Minikube | Kind | K3s | MicroK8s

Kubernetes management / multi-cluster:
Rancher

Alternative schedulers / orchestrators (non‑Kubernetes):
Mesos | Nomad | ECS (Amazon Elastic Container Service)

Docker Compose vs Kubernetes

Use Docker Compose

• for local development/test environments
• simple single-host stacks, quick prototypes
• your team wants minimal ops overhead

Use Kubernetes

• for production-grade
• multi-node orchestration with advanced features (scaling, self‑healing, service mesh, operators)
• fine-grained scheduling, autoscaling, complex networking
• run many services in production
• you want to adopt cloud-native patterns, operators, service meshes, or large-scale deployments

</table>

Feature	Docker Compose	Kubernetes
Purpose	Lightweight tool to define and run multi-container apps on a single Docker host (development & simple deployments).	Full container orchestration platform for running containers across many hosts with declarative APIs, scheduling, and a large ecosystem.
Scope	Service composition, basic networking, volumes, environment variables, simple scaling on a single host.	Scheduling, rolling updates, autoscaling, service discovery, complex networking, persistent volumes, secrets, RBAC, autoscalers, controllers/operators.
Feature-by-feature comparison
Deployment model	docker-compose.yml (imperative up/down, or declarative file used by the CLI).	YAML manifests (Deployments, Services, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs) applied with kubectl or via controllers.
Scaling	Can run multiple replicas with docker compose up --scale (single host). deploy.replicas in compose file is for Swarm, not for standalone docker-compose.	Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) across cluster nodes using metrics (CPU/memory/custom).
Scheduling & multi-node	Limited to one host (unless you use Swarm or other tooling).	Schedules pods across multiple nodes with constraints (nodeSelector, taints/tolerations, affinities).
High availability & self-healing	Restarts on failure on the same host; needs external tooling for HA.	Built-in health checks (readiness/liveness), restarts, rescheduling on node failure.
Networking & load balancing	Simple user-defined networks and port mappings.	ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer types, Ingress controllers, CNI plugins for advanced networking.
Storage	Volumes bound to host or volume drivers; limited portability.	PersistentVolumes + PersistentVolumeClaims with many provisioners (cloud disks, NFS, CSI drivers).
Configuration & secrets	Env files, environment variables, simple secrets via files or environment.	ConfigMaps and Secrets, RBAC-controlled access, encryption at rest options.
Observability & ecosystem	Limited built-in tooling — rely on Docker tooling and ad-hoc solutions.	Large ecosystem — Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, service meshes (Istio/Linkerd), operators, Helm charts.
Complexity & ops	Simple to learn and operate.	Significantly higher learning curve and operational overhead (cluster control plane, upgrades, security, networking).