Kubernetes vs. Docker Swarm vs. Nomad: The 2024 Orchestration Survival Guide

Let’s be honest. Most of you are running Kubernetes clusters you don’t actually need. I’ve audited enough startup infrastructure in Oslo to know the pattern: a team of three developers spending 40% of their time debugging CNI plugins and fighting YAML indentation instead of shipping code. It’s the "resume-driven development" trap.

But when you do need orchestration, you need it to be bulletproof. Downtime isn't just annoying; it costs money and, more importantly, reputation. As of May 2024, the landscape has settled. The hype wars are over. We have three real contenders left standing: Kubernetes (the standard), Docker Swarm (the cockroach that won't die), and Nomad (the minimalist). Which one fits your workload? And more importantly, does your underlying hardware actually support it?

The "Kubernetes Tax" and the IOPS Trap

Kubernetes (K8s) is the undisputed king. With the recent release of v1.30, stability is better than ever. But K8s is resource-hungry. It’s not just about CPU; it’s about the control plane. The heart of Kubernetes is etcd, a distributed key-value store that demands incredibly low storage latency.

If your VPS provider uses cheap spinning rust or throttled SATA SSDs, your K8s cluster will flake out under load. Not because your app is slow, but because etcd can't write to the leader fast enough. This causes leader elections, API timeouts, and eventually, the dreaded CrashLoopBackOff.

Pro Tip: Before you even install kubeadm, run an fio test on your VPS. If your fsync latency is above 10ms, do not run etcd there. On CoolVDS NVMe instances, we typically see latencies in the microseconds, which is why our K8s clusters don't implode during traffic spikes.

The Configuration Reality

Optimizing K8s requires getting your hands dirty. Default configurations are for checking boxes, not production. Here is a snippet for kubelet configuration to ensure your node doesn't die when a container goes rogue. This protects the system daemons.

apiVersion: kubelet.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: KubeletConfiguration
evictionHard:
  memory.available: "100Mi"
  nodefs.available: "10%"
  nodefs.inodesFree: "5%"
systemReserved:
  cpu: "500m"
  memory: "500Mi"
kubeReserved:
  cpu: "500m"
  memory: "500Mi"

This configuration (usually found in /var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml) reserves resources for the OS. Without this, a memory leak in your application will kill SSH access to the server. I’ve seen this happen during a Black Friday sale. It wasn’t pretty.

Docker Swarm: The "Just Works" Option

Don't laugh. Docker Swarm is still alive in 2024 for a reason: simplicity. If you have a monolith or a small set of microservices and you don't need complex CRDs or Service Meshes, Swarm is superior. It’s built into the Docker engine.

The overhead is negligible. You can run Swarm on smaller VPS instances without sacrificing performance. However, networking can be tricky if you span across different data centers. Keep your nodes local. If you are serving Norwegian customers, keep your nodes in Oslo or nearby. Latency to NIX (Norwegian Internet Exchange) matters.

Here is how simple it is to limit resources in Swarm v3 compose files, preventing the "noisy neighbor" effect on your own stack:

version: '3.8'
services:
  web:
    image: nginx:alpine
    deploy:
      resources:
        limits:
          cpus: '0.50'
          memory: 512M
        reservations:
          cpus: '0.25'
          memory: 256M

Nomad: The HashiCorp Way

Nomad is the middle ground. It schedules applications, not just containers. You can run a Java JAR, a binary, and a Docker container side-by-side. It’s a single binary, extremely lightweight, and scales to thousands of nodes more easily than K8s.

The downside? The ecosystem is smaller. You’ll likely need Consul for service discovery and Vault for secrets. That adds complexity back in. But for pure raw compute efficiency, Nomad on bare-metal or high-performance KVM VPS is a beast.

Infrastructure: The Layer That Actually Matters

You can pick the best orchestrator in the world, but if your kernel is shared or your I/O is choked, you lose. This is the difference between "containers" and "virtualization."

• LXC/OpenVZ: These are containers. They share the host kernel. If you run Docker inside OpenVZ, you are asking for trouble (double encapsulation, kernel module restrictions).
• KVM (CoolVDS Standard): This is hardware virtualization. You get your own kernel. You can load specific modules required for overlay networks like Calico or Cilium (eBPF).

When we built the CoolVDS platform, we chose KVM exclusively. Security compliance (like Schrems II and GDPR requirements for data isolation) often demands strict boundaries. Sharing a kernel with another customer is a risk vector serious businesses cannot accept.

Performance Benchmark: Etcd Write Latency

We ran a test simulating a 3-node Kubernetes cluster control plane. We compared a standard cloud VPS (SATA SSD) against a CoolVDS NVMe instance.

That 0.4ms latency is why your kubectl get pods returns instantly rather than hanging for three seconds.

The Verdict for 2024

Choose Kubernetes if: You have a team of 5+, need complex autoscaling, or require specific cloud-native integrations. Use a managed service or deploy it on rock-solid KVM instances like CoolVDS to avoid the etcd headache.

Choose Docker Swarm if: You are a small team, you want to deploy now, and you don't need the complexity. It works perfectly on our smaller VPS plans.

Choose Nomad if: You are mixing legacy binaries with Docker containers or need massive scale with low overhead.

Whatever you choose, respect the physics of the hardware. Orchestration adds a layer of abstraction, but it doesn't remove the need for raw power. Low latency, high IOPS, and data sovereignty are the pillars of a reliable stack in Norway.

Stop fighting with slow disks. Deploy a KVM instance on CoolVDS today, run your fio tests, and see what your cluster has been missing.