Best Container Orchestration Software for Linux of 2025

Kasm Workspaces streams your workplace environment directly to your web browser…on any device and from any location. Kasm is revolutionizing the way businesses deliver digital workspaces. We use our open-source web native container streaming technology to create a modern devops delivery of Desktop as a Service, application streaming, and browser isolation. Kasm is more than a service. It is a platform that is highly configurable and has a robust API that can be customized to your needs at any scale. Workspaces can be deployed wherever the work is. It can be deployed on-premise (including Air-Gapped Networks), in the cloud (Public and Private), or in a hybrid.

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is a comprehensive container orchestration platform that is fully managed. Notable clients like Duolingo, Samsung, GE, and Cook Pad rely on ECS to operate their critical applications due to its robust security, dependability, and ability to scale. There are multiple advantages to utilizing ECS for container management. For one, users can deploy their ECS clusters using AWS Fargate, which provides serverless computing specifically designed for containerized applications. By leveraging Fargate, customers eliminate the need for server provisioning and management, allowing them to allocate costs based on their application's resource needs while enhancing security through inherent application isolation. Additionally, ECS plays a vital role in Amazon’s own infrastructure, powering essential services such as Amazon SageMaker, AWS Batch, Amazon Lex, and the recommendation system for Amazon.com, which demonstrates ECS’s extensive testing and reliability in terms of security and availability. This makes ECS not only a practical option but a proven choice for organizations looking to optimize their container operations efficiently.

Kubernetes (K8s) is a powerful open-source platform designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of applications that are containerized. By organizing containers into manageable groups, it simplifies the processes of application management and discovery. Drawing from over 15 years of experience in handling production workloads at Google, Kubernetes also incorporates the best practices and innovative ideas from the wider community. Built on the same foundational principles that enable Google to efficiently manage billions of containers weekly, it allows for scaling without necessitating an increase in operational personnel. Whether you are developing locally or operating a large-scale enterprise, Kubernetes adapts to your needs, providing reliable and seamless application delivery regardless of complexity. Moreover, being open-source, Kubernetes offers the flexibility to leverage on-premises, hybrid, or public cloud environments, facilitating easy migration of workloads to the most suitable infrastructure. This adaptability not only enhances operational efficiency but also empowers organizations to respond swiftly to changing demands in their environments.

Deploy sophisticated applications using a secure and managed Kubernetes platform. GKE serves as a robust solution for running both stateful and stateless containerized applications, accommodating a wide range of needs from AI and ML to various web and backend services, whether they are simple or complex. Take advantage of innovative features, such as four-way auto-scaling and streamlined management processes. Enhance your setup with optimized provisioning for GPUs and TPUs, utilize built-in developer tools, and benefit from multi-cluster support backed by site reliability engineers. Quickly initiate your projects with single-click cluster deployment. Enjoy a highly available control plane with the option for multi-zonal and regional clusters to ensure reliability. Reduce operational burdens through automatic repairs, upgrades, and managed release channels. With security as a priority, the platform includes built-in vulnerability scanning for container images and robust data encryption. Benefit from integrated Cloud Monitoring that provides insights into infrastructure, applications, and Kubernetes-specific metrics, thereby accelerating application development without compromising on security. This comprehensive solution not only enhances efficiency but also fortifies the overall integrity of your deployments.

Kubernetes serves as a powerful foundation for transformative ideas. It enables developers to innovate and deliver projects more rapidly through the premier hybrid cloud and enterprise container solution. Red Hat OpenShift simplifies the process with automated installations, updates, and comprehensive lifecycle management across the entire container ecosystem, encompassing the operating system, Kubernetes, cluster services, and applications on any cloud platform. This service allows teams to operate with speed, flexibility, assurance, and a variety of options. You can code in production mode wherever you prefer to create, enabling a return to meaningful work. Emphasizing security at all stages of the container framework and application lifecycle, Red Hat OpenShift provides robust, long-term enterprise support from a leading contributor to Kubernetes and open-source technology. It is capable of handling the most demanding workloads, including AI/ML, Java, data analytics, databases, and more. Furthermore, it streamlines deployment and lifecycle management through a wide array of technology partners, ensuring that your operational needs are met seamlessly. This integration of capabilities fosters an environment where innovation can thrive without compromise.

Appvia Wayfinder provides a dynamic solution to manage your cloud infrastructure. It gives your developers self-service capabilities that let them manage and provision cloud resources without any hitch. Wayfinder's core is its security-first strategy, which is built on principles of least privilege and isolation. You can rest assured that your resources are safe. Platform teams rejoice! Centralised control allows you to guide your team and maintain organisational standards. But it's not just business. Wayfinder provides a single pane for visibility. It gives you a bird's-eye view of your clusters, applications, and resources across all three clouds. Join the leading engineering groups worldwide who rely on Appvia Wayfinder for cloud deployments. Do not let your competitors leave behind you. Watch your team's efficiency and productivity soar when you embrace Wayfinder!

Portainer Business makes managing containers easy. It is designed to be deployed from the data centre to the edge and works with Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes. It is trusted by more than 500K users. With its super-simple GUI and its comprehensive Kube-compatible API, Portainer Business makes it easy for anyone to deploy and manage container-based applications, triage container-related issues, set up automate Git-based workflows and build CaaS environments that end users love to use. Portainer Business works with all K8s distros and can be deployed on prem and/or in the cloud. It is designed to be used in team environments where there are multiple users and multiple clusters. The product incorporates a range of security features - including RBAC, OAuth integration and logging, which makes it suitable for use in large, complex production environments. For platform managers responsible for delivering a self-service CaaS environment, Portainer includes a suite of features that help control what users can / can't do and significantly reduces the risks associated with running containers in prod. Portainer Business is fully supported and includes a comprehensive onboarding experience that ensures you get up and running.

SaltStack is an intelligent IT automation platform that can manage, secure, and optimize any infrastructure--on-prem, in the cloud, or at the edge. It is built on an event-driven automation engine that detects and responds intelligently to any system. This makes it a powerful solution for managing complex environments. SaltStack's new SecOps offering can detect security flaws and mis-configured systems. This powerful automation can detect and fix any issue quickly, allowing you and your team to keep your infrastructure secure, compliant, and up to date. Comply and Protect are both part of the SecOps suite. Comply scans for compliance with CIS, DISA, STIG, NIST and PCI standards. Also, scan your operating system for vulnerabilities and update it with patches and patches.

Ambassador Edge Stack, a Kubernetes-native API Gateway, provides simplicity, security, and scalability for some of the largest Kubernetes infrastructures in the world. Ambassador Edge Stack makes it easy to secure microservices with a complete set of security functionality including automatic TLS, authentication and rate limiting. WAF integration is also available. Fine-grained access control is also possible. The API Gateway is a Kubernetes-based ingress controller that supports a wide range of protocols, including gRPC, gRPC Web, TLS termination, and traffic management controls to ensure resource availability.

You can use your favorite debugging software to locally troubleshoot your Kubernetes services. Telepresence, an open-source tool, allows you to run one service locally and connect it to a remote Kubernetes cluster. Telepresence was initially developed by Ambassador Labs, which creates open-source development tools for Kubernetes such as Ambassador and Forge. We welcome all contributions from the community. You can help us by submitting an issue, pull request or reporting a bug. Join our active Slack group to ask questions or inquire about paid support plans. Telepresence is currently under active development. Register to receive updates and announcements. You can quickly debug locally without waiting for a container to be built/push/deployed. Ability to use their favorite local tools such as debugger, IDE, etc. Ability to run large-scale programs that aren't possible locally.

Bacula Enterprise offers a single platform that provides cloud backup and recovery software for the Modern Data Center. Bacula Enterprise backup & recovery software is ideal for medium and large businesses. It offers unique innovation, modern architecture and business value benefits, as well as low cost of ownership. Bacula Enterprise corporate backup software solution uses unique technologies that increase the interoperability of Bacula Enterprise into many IT environments, such as managed service providers, software vendors, cloud providers, enterprise data centers, and cloud providers. Bacula Enterprise is used by thousands of organizations around the world in mission-critical environments such as NASA, Texas A&M University and Unicredit. Bacula offers more security features than other vendors and advanced hybrid Cloud connectivity to Amazon S3, Google, Oracle, and many others.

JFrog Pipelines enables software development teams to accelerate the delivery of updates by automating their DevOps workflows in a secure and efficient manner across all tools and teams involved. It incorporates functions such as continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), and infrastructure management, automating the entire journey from code development to production deployment. This solution is seamlessly integrated with the JFrog Platform and is offered in both cloud-based and on-premises subscription models. It can scale horizontally, providing a centralized management system capable of handling thousands of users and pipelines within a high-availability (HA) setup. With pre-built declarative steps that require no scripting, users can easily construct intricate pipelines, including those that link multiple teams together. Furthermore, it works in conjunction with a wide array of DevOps tools, and the various steps within a single pipeline can operate on diverse operating systems and architectures, thus minimizing the necessity for multiple CI/CD solutions. This versatility makes JFrog Pipelines a powerful asset for teams aiming to enhance their software delivery processes.

D2iQ Enterprise Kubernetes Platform (DKP) Enterprise Kubernetes Platform: Run Kubernetes Workloads at Scale D2iQ Kubernetes Platform (DKP): Adopt, expand, and enable advanced workloads across any infrastructure, whether on-prem, on the cloud, in air-gapped environments, or at the edge. Solve the Toughest Enterprise Kubernetes Challenges Accelerate the journey to production at scale, DKP provides a single, centralized point of control to build, run, and manage applications across any infrastructure. * Enable Day 2 Readiness Out-of-the-Box Without Lock-In * Simplify and Accelerate Kubernetes Adoption * Ensure Consistency, Security, and Performance * Expand Kubernetes Across Distributed Environments * Ensure Fast, Simple Deployment of ML and Fast Data Pipeline * Leverage Cloud Native Expertise

Mesos operates on principles similar to those of the Linux kernel, yet it functions at a different abstraction level. This Mesos kernel is deployed on each machine and offers APIs for managing resources and scheduling tasks for applications like Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, and Elasticsearch across entire cloud infrastructures and data centers. It includes native capabilities for launching containers using Docker and AppC images. Additionally, it allows both cloud-native and legacy applications to coexist within the same cluster through customizable scheduling policies. Developers can utilize HTTP APIs to create new distributed applications, manage the cluster, and carry out monitoring tasks. Furthermore, Mesos features an integrated Web UI that allows users to observe the cluster's status and navigate through container sandboxes efficiently. Overall, Mesos provides a versatile and powerful framework for managing diverse workloads in modern computing environments.

A versatile and straightforward workload orchestrator designed to deploy and oversee both containerized and non-containerized applications seamlessly across on-premises and cloud environments at scale. This efficient tool comes as a single 35MB binary that effortlessly fits into your existing infrastructure. It provides an easy operational experience whether on-prem or in the cloud, maintaining minimal overhead. Capable of orchestrating various types of applications—not limited to just containers—it offers top-notch support for Docker, Windows, Java, VMs, and more. By introducing orchestration advantages, it helps enhance existing services. Users can achieve zero downtime deployments, increased resilience, and improved resource utilization without the need for containerization. A single command allows for multi-region, multi-cloud federation, enabling global application deployment to any region using Nomad as a cohesive control plane. This results in a streamlined workflow for deploying applications to either bare metal or cloud environments. Additionally, Nomad facilitates the development of multi-cloud applications with remarkable ease and integrates smoothly with Terraform, Consul, and Vault for efficient provisioning, service networking, and secrets management, making it an indispensable tool in modern application management.

Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (formerly Docker Enterprise) gives you the power to build, run, and scale cloud native applications—the way that works for you. Increase developer efficiency and release frequency while reducing cost. Deploy Kubernetes and Swarm clusters out of the box and manage them via API, CLI, or web interface. Kubernetes, Swarm, or both Different apps—and different teams—have different container orchestration needs. Use Kubernetes, Swarm, or both depending on your specific requirements. Simplified cluster management Get up and running right out of the box—then manage clusters easily and apply updates with zero downtime using a simple web UI, CLI, or API. Integrated role-based access control (RBAC) Fine-grained security access control across your platform ensures effective separation of duties, and helps drive a security strategy built on the principle of least privilege. Identity management Easily integrate with your existing identity management solution and enable two-factor authentication to provide peace of mind that only authorized users are accessing your platform. Mirantis Kubernetes Engine works with Mirantis Container Runtime and Mirantis Secure Registry to provide security compliance.

Helios serves as a Docker orchestration platform designed for the deployment and management of containers across a wide array of servers. It offers both an HTTP API and a command-line interface, enabling users to interact seamlessly with the servers that host their containers. In addition, Helios maintains a record of significant events within your cluster, capturing details such as deployments, restarts, and version updates. The binary version of Helios is specifically compiled for Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, though it is also compatible with any platform that supports at least Java 8 and a current version of Maven 3. Users can utilize helios-solo to set up a local environment featuring both a Helios master and agent. Helios adopts a pragmatic approach; while it may not aim to address every problem at once, it is committed to delivering solid performance with the features it currently offers. Consequently, certain functionalities, like resource limits and dynamic scheduling, are not yet implemented. At this stage, the focus is primarily on solidifying CI/CD use cases and the related tools, but there are plans to eventually incorporate dynamic scheduling, composite jobs, and other advanced features in the future. The evolution of Helios reflects its dedication to continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs.

Data-driven computational pipelines. Nextflow allows for reproducible and scalable scientific workflows by using software containers. It allows adaptation of scripts written in most common scripting languages. Fluent DSL makes it easy to implement and deploy complex reactive and parallel workflows on clusters and clouds. Nextflow was built on the belief that Linux is the lingua Franca of data science. Nextflow makes it easier to create a computational pipeline that can be used to combine many tasks. You can reuse existing scripts and tools. Additionally, you don't have to learn a new language to use Nextflow. Nextflow supports Docker, Singularity and other containers technology. This, together with integration of the GitHub Code-sharing Platform, allows you write self-contained pipes, manage versions, reproduce any configuration quickly, and allow you to integrate the GitHub code-sharing portal. Nextflow acts as an abstraction layer between the logic of your pipeline and its execution layer.

It is the only Kubernetes distribution which is simple, solid, and certified. It works on any infrastructure, including bare metal, on-premises or private clouds, edge, IoT or public clouds. It's free and open source. Zero Friction – k0s dramatically reduces the complexity involved in installing and running Kubernetes. Bootstrapping new kube clusters takes only minutes. Developer friction is zero, making it easy for anyone to get started, even if they don't have any special skills. Zero Deps: k0s comes as a single binary that has no host OS dependencies other than the kernel of the host OS. It works with any OS without additional software packages. Any security vulnerabilities or performance problems can be fixed directly within the k0s Distribution. Zero Cost - K0s is free for commercial or personal use and will always be. The source code can be found on GitHub, under Apache 2 license.

Originating from the dynamic city of Rotterdam, known for its penchant for innovation, OneCloud emerged to tackle the numerous challenges developers encountered while creating web applications using conventional hosting and cloud infrastructures. Our journey was sparked by a profound ambition to transform and enhance the landscape of cloud development. At OneCloud, we are dedicated to equipping developers with an advanced Kubernetes cloud platform, which provides them with essential tools to reclaim command over their web application creation. Our mission is to remove barriers and simplify the development process, allowing developers to focus on their creativity and innovative ideas. By choosing OneCloud, you are not merely accessing a cloud platform; you are also partnering with a dependable technology ally and a supportive team that you can consistently count on. We invite you to collaborate with us as we redefine the cloud development landscape, unlocking the full potential of the Cloud and innovating the methods of constructing and launching web applications. Together, we can pave the way for a new era in development practices.

The Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), which is fully managed, simplifies the process of deploying and overseeing containerized applications. It provides serverless Kubernetes capabilities, a seamless CI/CD experience, and robust security and governance features suited for enterprises. By bringing together your development and operations teams on one platform, you can swiftly build, deliver, and expand applications with greater assurance. Additionally, it allows for elastic provisioning of extra resources without the hassle of managing the underlying infrastructure. You can implement event-driven autoscaling and triggers using KEDA. The development process is expedited through Azure Dev Spaces, which integrates with tools like Visual Studio Code, Azure DevOps, and Azure Monitor. Furthermore, it offers sophisticated identity and access management via Azure Active Directory, along with the ability to enforce dynamic rules across various clusters using Azure Policy. Notably, it is accessible in more regions than any competing cloud service provider, enabling wider reach for your applications. This comprehensive platform ensures that businesses can operate efficiently in a highly scalable environment.

Alibaba Cloud's Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) is a comprehensive managed service designed to streamline the deployment and management of Kubernetes environments. It seamlessly integrates with various services including virtualization, storage, networking, and security, enabling users to enjoy high-performance and scalable solutions for their containerized applications. Acknowledged as a Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP), ACK also holds certification from the Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program, guaranteeing a reliable Kubernetes experience and the ability to easily migrate workloads. This certification reinforces the service’s commitment to ensuring consistency and portability across Kubernetes environments. Furthermore, ACK offers robust enterprise-level cloud-native features, providing thorough application security and precise access controls. Users can effortlessly establish Kubernetes clusters, while also benefiting from a container-focused approach to application management throughout their lifecycle. This holistic service empowers businesses to optimize their cloud-native strategies effectively.

The latest iterations of Docker feature swarm mode, which allows for the native management of a cluster known as a swarm, composed of multiple Docker Engines. Using the Docker CLI, one can easily create a swarm, deploy various application services within it, and oversee the swarm's operational behaviors. The Docker Engine integrates cluster management seamlessly, enabling users to establish a swarm of Docker Engines for service deployment without needing any external orchestration tools. With a decentralized architecture, the Docker Engine efficiently manages node role differentiation at runtime rather than at deployment, allowing for the simultaneous deployment of both manager and worker nodes from a single disk image. Furthermore, the Docker Engine adopts a declarative service model, empowering users to specify the desired state of their application's service stack comprehensively. This streamlined approach not only simplifies the deployment process but also enhances the overall efficiency of managing complex applications.

Manage your applications seamlessly across various clouds and containers with Apache Brooklyn. This software facilitates the administration of cloud applications by allowing you to create blueprints that represent your application, which are saved as text files in version control. It automatically configures and integrates components across numerous machines, supporting over 20 public clouds, as well as private clouds or bare metal servers, including Docker containers. Additionally, it enables you to monitor essential application metrics, scale resources according to demand, and restart or replace any failed components. You can easily view and adjust settings through the web console or streamline operations with the REST API for greater automation and efficiency. This capability makes Apache Brooklyn a versatile tool for modern application management.

Apache Helix serves as a versatile framework for managing clusters, ensuring the automatic oversight of partitioned, replicated, and distributed resources across a network of nodes. This tool simplifies the process of reallocating resources during instances of node failure, system recovery, cluster growth, and configuration changes. To fully appreciate Helix, it is essential to grasp the principles of cluster management. Distributed systems typically operate on multiple nodes to achieve scalability, enhance fault tolerance, and enable effective load balancing. Each node typically carries out key functions within the cluster, such as data storage and retrieval, as well as the generation and consumption of data streams. Once set up for a particular system, Helix functions as the central decision-making authority for that environment. Its design ensures that critical decisions are made with a holistic view, rather than in isolation. Although integrating these management functions directly into the distributed system is feasible, doing so adds unnecessary complexity to the overall codebase, which can hinder maintainability and efficiency. Therefore, utilizing Helix can lead to a more streamlined and manageable system architecture.