Rancher vs. Portainer - Which one should I choose?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- Rancher vs. Portainer, which one is better" Which one should I choose? Can Portainer manager Kubernetes? Can Rancher manage Kubernetes? We answer all these questions and more in this quick, no fluff video. Side note, this is one of the most asked questions in my live streams.
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#Rancher #Portainer #HomeLab
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Thank you for watching!
Do you use Rancher or Portainer?
Rancher
Portainer, I don't really need to work with kubernetes, and need to keep it light and simples as possible.
Portainer for testing new services and rancher to spin up my frequently used containers like traefik, pihole and so on..
Portainer. I haven’t messed with kubernetes much and it works great for my docker containers
I use Portainer. I used before rancher, ubuntu host inside freenas. I think it is very complicated for me.
Latest Portainer also can process Docker Compose v3 yaml, finally 🙌
Point of interest: If you create a docker swarm and run portainer agent as a service, you can manage containers running on all members of the swarm, allowing you to deploy here and there. The biggest shortcoming of the Portainer/docker relationship is the lack of a default Registry to allow you to share the same images across all members of the swarm. You must download images to every member in the swarm and you must be careful when running docker builds to ensure the builds is run on the same host you plan to launch the container on, or you have to manually copy the image to other members of the swarm.
rancher has objectively more features, so the choice is clear for me. I also love that reverse proxy, ingress and then cert-manager auto-deploys certificates with ACME and an internal ca. love rancher, love k8s
Awesome video! By far one of the best self hosted/homelab channels I've seen!
One thing I learned about rancher vs portainer is that if you are using an older or low power computer (sometimes this can be true for raspberry pi's too) , portainer runs better. With rancher I saw large cpu usage and rancher kept restarting when I opened the webui while being run on an old dell. Portainer ran fine, but I agree for running it on newer hardware rancher is my first choice.
Still blows my mind how do you don't have over a 100k followers yet!
Perfect timing. Been using Docker-compose for a while but recently began diving into considering Portainer as well as considering moving my containers over to K8s
There is a key difference between Portainer and Rancher: While Portainer just allows you to connect to an EXISTING kubernetes cluster and roughly manage resources deployed inside, Rancher will actually completely manage your kubernetes cluster and makes setup and maintainance a charm. Like you said, for plain docker i would always go for Portainer and i love it. Even if you don't use the Portainer dashboard it's a great way to get an authenticated proxy for the docker api. Still when it comes to Kubernetes i would always go for Rancher for cluster management and K8S Dashboard + Rancher Dashboard for resource management inside the cluster.
simply: both! I've a proxmox server, where i installed docker directly on host, too, to spin up small containers i don't need to be replicated (like a small dns, or haproxy), and there i installed portainer and rancher, too... and used rancher yesterday (following your videos, thanks!) to install a 3master+3workers cluster, awesome how easy it was!
I'm portainer guy.. it suits my needs really well. I really only use docker-compose, I tried rancher and Kubernetes but it seems overly complicated for what I'm doing. One thing I love about using docker is I create my compose files in my test environment and then when all is working as expected I can deploy that same file to my prod environment. With rancher it seems like I had to use the GUI to enter in all of my attributes. That may not be the case but I didn't get much further than that. I used your video that you put out last year on rancher and Kubernetes, it was great, easy to follow, and it got me up and running. Once it was all going I just figured it was too complex for me. I really do appreciate you making these videos, they are educational and entertaining.
Thanks! I use kubernetes manifests (deployment/service yaml files) and use kubectl to deploy them. I never configure anything in rancher (and even portainer) I always use a cli because it is repeatable!
No fluff!!!! Excellent. Thanks!
I'm running Portainer mostly because I'm not really utilizing Kubernetes. I also found the Portainer UI to be a little more inviting. I think I'll spin up a Rancher instance this weekend and check it out, though.
Thank you for confirming my pick of Rancher
I have used both rancher and portainer. However, I find portainer use much less resource on my budget server. I like rancher better, maybe when I migrate to a more powerful server someday.
Yup, same experience here at my mini home lab with Raspis and one 2011 mac mini... So for now, I stick with portainer... d
I had followed your video for setting up Portainer, and then tried to follow your video for containerizing Plex. I wasn't able to mount my TrueNas SMB share in Portainer (and found some posts mentioning that this is not (yet) possible in Portainer if you are only running Kubernetes). I am going to try out Rancher now and see whether that fits me more.
Thank you for all you amazing tutorials!
Was just asking myself that exact same question this morning.
Thanks a mill for this, and the other videos. Youre doing a great job 👍🏻
We been trying to find alternatives of running game servers in containers because the de facto software of Pterodactyl is quite inaccessible to me. However someone mentioned that Portainer lacks the ability to view files and edit them. As well as issuing an SSL for the UI. I wish there were a "simple" single node solution to managing containers. Which comes with the basics (logging, file manager, editing files, etc) and can be installed and managed relatively easily.
I could not really decide, but i am going to have a play with Rancher. Purely due to the tutorial you did on self hosting services and exposing services via rancher to the web. But as you said, spin up Portainer and see what it feels like too.
Any chance for a ZoneMinder deployed on Rancher video ? Great content btw
Hey Tim, thanks for the great Video. Maybe you could compare both Solutions by conparing their used ressources in the Future. I mean the load that Rancher produces is damn high.
I use both of them, but I must say if you want to run Rancher with Kubernetes you must have the necessary resources to do it. You can’t install it on a laptop with for instance a i7 processor and 8 gig of ram. You will need a server with enough memory and CPU power. Portainer on the other hand is a lightweight solution which can connect to a docker instance running on a NAS. It is much easier to run containers in Portainer. However, if you want a high available solution Rancher is a better option
I needed this video in my life :D ILY
What about licenses?
If you run each container stack in it's own linux container ( lxc ) under proxmox for flexibility like I do, Portainer is not an option as you'll need an expensive business license to allow enough agents. Having a separate linux container for each docker stack is nice as you can easily manage it's resources and move it to another proxmox host from the Web UI.
Hey Tim,
How about some video's on NFS software like Ceph or Gluster?
Got the answer. It's Rancher. Thanks!
Portainer seem to plug into the Cockpit server management system. I do not know how to add Rancher to a Cockpit instance. Portainer seems to have replaced cockpit-docker for Ubuntu Server. I am new to Docker and servers in general. You have always been a great source of Server / HomeLab info. Many thanks
Thank you!
My favourite tech teacher. Well explained!
Thank you! 😃
Maan, I've been watching your video on Rancher (+k8s + minecraft), and, having using Portainer for a while, I got a thought - what's the difference between Rancher and Portainer... I should google it afterwards!
.... and at the video end I got a suggestion to this one! Thanks! Stream on!
I couldnt get Rancher to install no matter how much I tried, but Portainer worked without a hitch... :(
Nice short and concise video. I like it.
have you played with authelia? how can i integrate authentication to my services using authelia or similar?
free version of portainer allows only 3 nodes is Rancher can help me with just docker containers?
Thanks for all the excellent content. Looking forward to hear your views on kubernetes operator or creating one in Golang, in some upcoming videos.
Thanks Tim. I was just wondering this very thing. I think Rancher is going to be the better choice for me.
Quick and good comparisons....
Awesome content! Cheers from Brazil!
Vim or VS code? can be next episode.... since now the video is very short
First of, it's awesome seeing a devops geek version Johnny Depp doing youtube tutorials. That said; I always considered docker a dev-environment tool and only lately have I actually served docker containers in production. Looking for management software, I ended up using Portainer. I have my own high availability IaaS, so I don't need replication/orchestration/load balacing at all and I have my own scripts to manage versioning/updates/backups etc. Nonetheless; I have gotten anxious that my setup is getting obsolete as everyone is switcing to kubernetes. Is there any reason for me to switch to k3s? (k8s would be an overkill for me)
Thank you! 100% k3s. I have some videos on how to bootstrap k3s!
But just to expand, if you want higher availability for your containers and learn the kubernetes way, I say go for it! Portainer or Rancher can help if you are new to kubernetes.
@@TechnoTim care to explain how single-pod k3s apps are better than plain old docker? I really can't see the benefit, yet everyone says kubernetes is the way to go.
There are added benefits to running k3s even with single node. cleanup, health checks, ingresses, helm charts, kubectl api to manage, and many other features. You also have the option to expand your nodes as your workloads grow. Scale horizontally and not vertical. Also, you get to learn k3s :)
Both good and have their place, rancher is a must have, portioner so light - why not use both
A lot of people love your videos because you get right to it. Boom, Bing bam.
You did a rancher install where you added minecraft, I know, but I'd love a sequel to that video where you ramble on about features of kubernetes or options. Or the components of kubernetes. I would like to dive into rancher again soon, I put it aside to work on other stuff, I followed the video but just don't feel like "I get it" everything works, I just want more.
Thanks for all you do, just had to get my 2 cents in.
Thank you for the feedback!
thank you tim. i love your videos. you are good guy
Thanks Techno Tim
Any chance of an update to this video with contemporary versions?
How crippled is the Portainer's community edition? You seem to favor Rancher.
Call me weird but I use kubectl and docker cli almost exclusively XD
Any specific reason?
@@0dyss3us51 I just like the flexibility and using the cmdl is just a great way to learn. Since I'm pretty familiar with it now, most GUIs don't provide all the functions I need or depend on. I still have the kubernetes dashboard deployed don't get me wrong it's great same as Rancher, but I like my yamls and helm so I have to use the comdl anyways. And yes I know that you can deploy helm with rancher, but I want to my cluster to be replicatetable, so I use a folder for every helm deployment.
When on question asked you as a response here a question. You should know that you have asked wrong question in first place.
The evaluation table for each one of use may contain same statements but they may lay in different domains. The best solution is not one, just use both. And use their strong points and mitigate week points with the other tool.
Whats the difference between kubernetes and docker? I currently use docker with portainer what differences would kubernetes with rancher have?
Kubernetes is a desired state orchestrator for containers across one to many hosts. I'm pretty sure Portainer with Docker Swarm is essentially the same thing though. The advantage of Kubernetes is that the enterprise world has settled on it as the standard for container orchestration and therefore has a lot of things developed for it. Things like operators which can make your life even easier by making things like storage, databases, etc... automated.
Also, as this video states, Portainer recently added the ability to control Kubernetes clusters.
Rancher doesn't officially support ARM but portainer does - so I guess I have only 1 option on Raspberry pis
Rancher works just fine with ARM. Even Longhorn works... Albeit Longhorn was too slow to be stable on my Raspberry Pis and most of the apps Rancher has access to are x86 only.
Same here. Works fine, Longhorn, metrics, and all!
Ok I'll subscribe just for that middle forehead salut 😃
Command line :)
You can manage rancher from cli with kubectl.
Rancher because there hasn't been a reverse proxy video by you on Portainer yet!
soon!
so i tried using both in one machine and i think i broke rancher trying to use them both 🙃😅😐
Don’t cross the streams! Haha!
i use portainer
Octant
You should have at least said. If your starting off with neither. I would use ...
I did
Right at the beginning.
I'm paraphrasing...
If you are using docker only, then portainer.
If you are managing kubernetes, then rancher.
@@coletraintechgames2932 then I said if you’re using neither, spin each up at the end 😀