Resources on Martijn's Notes

A comparison of the resource usage of Kubernetes and OpenShift

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 15:15:43 +0100

When comparing Kubernetes with OpenShift (Red Hat’s Kubernetes-based platform), there are several key differences that affect how they handle resource consumption and system resources. While OpenShift is built on top of Kubernetes, there are additional functionalities and differences that impact the resource requirements:

Additional Functionalities in OpenShift OpenShift offers more out-of-the-box functionality than Kubernetes. This can lead to higher overhead, but also to more ease of use and integration:

Security: OpenShift adds extra security layers, such as Security Context Constraints (SCC) and SELinux restrictions, which may require additional resources for securing containers and applications.

The statement 'beware of Kubernetes, it burns through your resources'

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 15:00:43 +0100

The statement “beware of Kubernetes, it burns through your resources” refers to the fact that Kubernetes, although a powerful and flexible solution for orchestrating containerized applications, can consume a relatively large amount of system resources (such as CPU, memory, and storage).

This is due to several factors:

Kubernetes has overhead: Kubernetes itself runs as a cluster of various components, such as the API server, scheduler, controller manager, and more. These components run on the control plane and need to be managed. This adds extra overhead to your system, meaning that the resources Kubernetes itself uses are added on top of the applications you are actually running.