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Portainer, Rancher, OpenShift

A comparison

How does Portainer compare to Rancher? How about to OpenShift?

This is a question we get asked almost daily by people looking for a Kubernetes management platform. So we've done the research and created a comparison table for Portainer vs Rancher vs OpenShift.

We've spent considerable time deploying and understanding Rancher and OpenShift to discover their strengths, weaknesses (or functionality they don't attempt to provide), and seeing how Portainer compares. We took a non-biased view of this assessment, as being biased doesn't help us to learn (and we hope you appreciate the transparency).

If we had to draw a similarity, Portainer is more like OpenShift than Rancher, primarily due to the product strategy of OpenShift, which is to make the hard, easy. This is very similar to Portainer's goal of reducing toil and mental burden in the operation of Kubernetes. Rancher is basically a 1:1 technical translation of API to UI, and doesn't attempt to enable non-experts to operate the platform, and that's a totally acceptable strategy for their ideal customer profile.
Analysis

1. Build Environments

Straight off the bat, Portainer and Rancher/OpenShift serve two very different needs. Rancher and OpenShift are both tools that you use to CONSTRUCT yourself a Kubernetes cluster, one that is self-managed (be that on prem or in-cloud).

Portainer as a company does not provide a Kubernetes distribution, and we have no mechanism to build an on-premises cluster in our app, so if this is your primary need, we won't help there, but we can help you to build 

Kubernetes clusters through Cloud Provider KaaS offerings, which arguably is the most operationally efficient way of using Kubernetes anyway.

Summary: Portainer helps you deploy managed Kubernetes clusters, which is our recommended way of consuming Kubernetes unless you have a large dedicated team of Kubernetes experts.

Analysis

2. Multi-Cluster Management

Secondly, the biggest difference we can see between both Portainer & Rancher vs OpenShift is that OpenShift is not a multi-cluster manager.

You use the OpenShift installer to build a (singular) OpenShift cluster against either on-premises equipment or in a select number of cloud provider IaaS offerings, and the cluster gets deployed with a Management UI for that cluster. There is no way to deploy any additional clusters and manage them from the one management UI.

 

Of course, RedHat has an additional product that does this (Redhat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes), but this requires a dedicated cluster to run it, and it's a licensed product. If you can afford to pay for OpenShift, then paying an additional $800 per month for a dedicated management cluster and an extra license fee is probably okay. 

Rancher and Portainer both let you (natively) deploy or import any number of existing environments under the one management server, which is great when you are operating at scale.

Summary: Portainer is a multi-cluster manager that is extremely lightweight and can provide centralized access control and governance at scale.

 

Analysis

3. Platform vs Tool

It's important to note that all three products are aiming to be a complete "turn-key" platform to manage containerized applications, with the analogy "Kubernetes is the engine, we are the car" commonly used.

All three products aim to be much more than just an alternative to the Kubernetes Dashboard (or variants of it, like Mirantis Lens).

In reality, all these products aim to provide a comprehensive Kubernetes management platform that includes an intuitive UI that guides less experienced users, an integrated GitOps capability, integrated monitoring/ observability, and integrated alerting.

Because of this, all three offer either native capability or integrations with 3rd party open source components (such as ArgoCD).

Portainer made a decision to integrate with the Kubernetes Metrics API, which gives a good level of observability, rather than requiring all users to deploy the resource-heavy Prometheus and Grafana. That said, there is nothing stopping you from using Prometheus and Grafana, or ArgoCD alongside Portainer.

Summary: if you want a quick view of resource usage of your apps, and can't spare the additional resource overhead, Portainer is your only choice here.

Analysis

4. Ease of Use

Really though, the most impactful difference between the products is the target user. Portainer and OpenShift both provide a management experience that applies safe/secure best practices, and does so to ensure that non-experts can operate in an environment that they might not fully understand.

With Portainer, the admin can easily disable Portainer's applied defaults and customize them to suit the skills of the team, whereas with OpenShift the defaults are enforced. If the defaults don't suit you, then OpenShift will cause friction.

Rancher however takes a very different approach. Rancher's product appears to be tailored to Kubernetes experts, who are expected to know how to secure the platform and applications correctly. 

Summary: if you want a guided, intuitive, safe-by-default experience, with the ability for the admin to adjust the defaults, then choose Portainer.

Comparison Table - Cluster Build

 

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Create In-Cloud KaaS Clusters
No
Yes (AKS, GKE, EKS)
Yes (AKS, GKE, EKS, Civo, DoKS, Linode)
Create and Update In-Cloud (IaaS) Kubernetes Clusters
Yes, the initial cluster (using installer)
Yes
No
Create and Update On-Premises Kubernetes Clusters
Yes, the initial cluster (using installer)
Yes
No

Comparison Table - Cluster Management

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Import and Manage Existing Kubernetes Clusters
No, unless purchasing additional software (RHACM)
Yes
Yes
Can configure Cluster Internal Settings (APIServer etc)
Yes (via YAML)
Yes (via UI for RKE)
No
Can enable User authentication for Cluster
Yes
Yes
Yes
Can enable Groups within Cluster
Yes
Yes
No
Can create ServiceAccounts within Cluster
Yes
Yes
No
Can create Cluster RBAC Roles and Bindings
Yes (via YAML)
Yes, pre-defined and custom roles.
Yes, pre-defined roles. Roles assigned to users via UI
Applies secure defaults
Yes
No (except Rancher Federal)
Yes
Can change/deactivate secure defaults
No
No
Yes
Can set Pod security policies
Yes (via proprietary SCC)
Yes (using PSP-deprecated)
Yes (via OPA)
Configure Node Settings
Yes (via YAML)
Yes (via YAML)
No
View Node Status (health, conditions, events, taints, images, pods, resources, logs)
Yes
Yes
Partial (no conditions, images, logs)
Kubernetes API Proxy (can use KubeCTL)
Yes, after generating kubeconfig using oc client
Yes by downloading Kubeconfig from UI
Yes by downloading Kubeconfig from UI

Comparison Table - Multi-Cluster Management

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Multi-Cluster Management from a single management instance
No, unless purchasing additional software (RHACM)
Yes
Yes
Centralized User Management
N/A
Yes
Yes
Centralized Group Management
N/A
Yes
Yes
Centralized Access Control
N/A
Yes
Yes
Centralized RBAC
N/A
Yes
Yes

Comparison Table - Namespaces

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Create/Delete namespaces
Yes (via YAML)
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Assign Users / Groups Role based access to namespaces
Yes (via YAML)
Yes (via UI)
Yes (via UI)
Can set and apply NetworkPolicies to Namespaces
Yes
Yes
No
Can set CPU/RAM Resource Quotas in Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Can set advanced resource quotas (disk, load balancers) in Namespaces
No
Yes
Yes

Comparison Table - Deployments

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Create Pods
No
Yes (AKS, GKE, EKS)
Yes (AKS, GKE, EKS, Civo, DoKS, Linode)
Create Deployment / ReplicaSet
Yes
Yes
Yes
Create DaemonSet
Yes
Yes
Yes
Create StatefulSet
Yes
Yes
Yes
Create CronJob
Yes
Yes
No
Create Jobs
Yes
Yes
No
No-Code UI based Deployment
Yes
Yes
Yes
Simplified UI Deployment (minimal Kube-Specific Lingo, minimal questions)
Yes
No
Yes
Create Deployments from YAML
Yes
Yes
Yes
Create Deployments from HELM
Yes
Yes
Yes
Create Deployments from YAML with Kustomize
No
Yes
No
Create Deployments from Docker Compose Files
No
No
Yes
Create Stacks of Applications
Yes (App Grouping)
No
Yes (Stacks)
Support Setting HealthChecks (Readiness, Liveness, Startup Probes)
Yes
Yes
No
Support ConfigMaps and Secrets
Yes
Yes
Yes
Support Images from Private Registries
Yes (image pull secret)
Yes (image pull secret)
Yes (centrally managed)
Support Setting Resource Limits
Yes
Yes
Yes
Support Setting Rollout (Scaling and Update) Strategy
Yes
Yes
No
Support configuring Pod Autoscaler
Yes
Yes
Yes
Support Setting Labels and Annotations
Yes
Yes
No
Monitor Performance
Prometheus
Prometheus
Metrics Server
View Events
Yes
Yes
Yes
Connect to Console
Yes
Yes
Yes
View Logs
Yes
Yes
Yes
View YAML
Yes
Yes
Yes
Set and View Alerts (via AlertManager)
Yes
No
No
Marketplace Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Custom Deployment Templates
Yes (BuildConfigs)
No
Yes (Custom Templates)
Can install Operators/CRDs
Yes
Yes
No (unless via HELM)
Multi-Cluster Deployments
No, unless purchasing additional software (RHACM)
Yes (Fleet)
Yes (EdgeStacks)

Comparison Table - Storage

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Can Create Persistent Volumes
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Can Create Persistent Volume Claims
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Yes (via UI and YAML)
Can take Volume Snapshots
Yes
No
No

Comparison Table - Networking

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Define Service and map to deployments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Define Ingress HTTP & HTTPS pass-through Routes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Define Ingress HTTPS Routes (ingress termination)
Yes
No
No
Publish Service via Load Balancer
No
Yes
Yes

Comparison Table - Integrations

Capability
OpenShift
Rancher
Portainer
Centralized Logging
Yes
Yes (Banzai)
No
Metrics API
Prometheus
Prometheus
Metrics Server
Observability Stack
Yes (Prometheus & Grafana)
Yes (Prometheus & Grafana)
No
Alerting
Yes (AlertManager)
Yes (AlertManager)
No
ServiceMesh
Yes
Yes
No
Serverless API
Yes (kNative)
No
No
CI Tooling (Image Builds)
Yes
No
No
CD Tooling
Yes
No
No
GitOps Tooling
Yes (ArgoCD)
Yes (Native)
Yes (Native)
Multi-Cluster CD Tooling
No, unless purchasing additional software (RHACM)
Yes, Fleet
Partial (Edge stacks, one time deploy)
Cluster Backups
Yes
Yes
No
OPA Gatekeeper
Yes
Yes
Yes
Security Scanning
No
Yes
No

Key Takeaways

Build Environments Summary: Portainer helps you deploy managed Kubernetes clusters, which is our recommended way of consuming Kubernetes unless you have a large dedicated team of Kubernetes experts.  
Multi-Cluster Management Summary: Portainer is a multi-cluster manager that is extremely lightweight and can provide centralized access control and governance at scale.  
Platform vs Tools Summary: If you want a quick view of resource usage of your apps, and can't spare the additional resource overhead, Portainer is your only choice here.   
Ease of use Summary: if you want a guided, intuitive, safe-by-default experience, with the ability for the admin to adjust the defaults, then choose Portainer.  

Talk to us about your project

We're here to answer your questions on how Portainer can speed up your container adoption.