Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Docker VS OpenCensus

Compare Docker VS OpenCensus and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Docker logo Docker

Docker is an open platform that enables developers and system administrators to create distributed applications.

OpenCensus logo OpenCensus

Application and Data, Monitoring, and Monitoring Tools
  • Docker Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-25
  • OpenCensus Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-25

Docker

Website
docker.com
$ Details
Release Date
2013 January
Startup details
Country
United States
State
California
Founder(s)
Solomon Hykes
Employees
50 - 99

OpenCensus

Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Release Date
-

Docker features and specs

  • Portability
    Docker containers are designed to run consistently across different environments such as development, testing, and production, ensuring that software behaves the same regardless of where it's deployed.
  • Efficiency
    Docker containers share the host OS kernel and use fewer resources compared to traditional virtual machines, which allows for faster startups and reduced overhead.
  • Isolation
    Containers encapsulate the application and its dependencies in a separate environment, which minimizes conflicts between different applications' dependencies.
  • Scalability
    Docker makes it easier to scale applications quickly and manage resource allocation dynamically, which is particularly useful for microservices architectures.
  • Continuous Integration and Deployment
    Docker facilitates CI/CD processes by making it easier to automate the deployment pipeline, resulting in faster code releases and more frequent updates.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    A vast community and a rich ecosystem of tools and pre-built images in Docker Hub, enabling you to quickly find and reuse code and solutions.

Possible disadvantages of Docker

  • Complexity
    While Docker can simplify certain aspects of deployment, it adds a layer of complexity to the infrastructure that might require specialized knowledge and training.
  • Security
    Containers share the host OS kernel, which can pose security risks if an attacker gains access to the kernel. Proper isolation and security measures must be implemented.
  • Persistent Data
    Managing persistent data in Docker can be challenging, as containers are ephemeral and the default storage solutions are not always suitable for all applications.
  • Monitoring and Debugging
    Traditional monitoring and debugging tools might not work well with containerized applications, requiring specialized tools and approaches which can complicate troubleshooting.
  • Performance Overhead
    Although lighter than virtual machines, Docker containers can still introduce performance overheads, especially when multiple containers are running simultaneously.
  • Compatibility
    Not all software and systems are fully compatible with Docker, which can limit its use in certain legacy applications and complex environments.

OpenCensus features and specs

  • Unified Tracing and Metrics
    OpenCensus provides a single API for capturing distributed traces and metrics, allowing developers to instrument their applications without needing to work with multiple different libraries.
  • Multiple Language Support
    OpenCensus supports a wide range of programming languages, enabling its use across diverse technology stacks and facilitating easy integration into existing projects.
  • Backend Agnostic
    OpenCensus can export data to various backends including Prometheus, Stackdriver, Zipkin, and more, offering flexibility in monitoring and observability solutions.
  • Automatically Instrumented Libraries
    It provides automatic instrumentation for many popular libraries and frameworks, reducing the effort required to add observability into an existing codebase.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source project, OpenCensus allows for community involvement, continuous improvement, and transparency, with the potential for community-driven innovations and support.

Possible disadvantages of OpenCensus

  • Complexity of Configuration
    Configuring OpenCensus can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with distributed tracing and metrics collection, potentially increasing the learning curve.
  • Integration Overhead
    Despite offering automatic instrumentation, integrating OpenCensus into a large existing application may still require significant effort and testing.
  • Performance Overhead
    Like any monitoring system, OpenCensus introduces some performance overhead that could impact application performance, particularly if not properly configured.
  • Fragmented Documentation
    The documentation for OpenCensus can be fragmented or lacking in certain areas, making it difficult for new users to find comprehensive guides or troubleshooting information.
  • Deprecation and Transition to OpenTelemetry
    OpenCensus is being merged into OpenTelemetry, which could lead to deprecation, and users might eventually need to transition to or adopt OpenTelemetry for continued support and updates.

Docker videos

What is Docker in 5 minutes

More videos:

  • Tutorial - What is Docker? Why it's popular and how to use it to save money (tutorial)
  • Review - Real World PHP Dockerfile Review, from a #Docker Captain

OpenCensus videos

Custom metrics with OpenCensus

More videos:

  • Review - OpenTelemetry: Overview & Backwards Compatibility of OpenTracing + OpenCensus - Steve Flanders
  • Review - OpenTelemetry: Overview & Backwards Compatibility of OpenTracing + OpenCensus - Steve Flanders

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Docker and OpenCensus)
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Dev Ops
0 0%
100% 100
Containers As A Service
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Docker and OpenCensus

Docker Reviews

Exploring 7 Efficient Alternatives to MAMP for Local Development Environments
Though not specifically designed for PHP development, Docker offers a containerized approach to create, deploy, and run applications. It enables easy installation of PHP, web servers, and databases within containers, facilitating quick and consistent development environment setups.
Source: medium.com
Top 6 Alternatives to XAMPP for Local Development Environments
Docker - A containerization platform that allows developers to package applications and their dependencies into containers. Docker Compose can be used to define multi-container application stacks, including web servers, databases, and other services. Features powerful portability and consistency, supports rapid building, sharing, and container management, suitable for...
Source: dev.to
The Top 7 Kubernetes Alternatives for Container Orchestration
Docker uses images as templates to create new containers using Docker engine commands such as Build -t or run -d.
Kubernetes Alternatives 2023: Top 8 Container Orchestration Tools
Docker is an open-source platform for building, managing, deploying containerized applications. Swarm is a native feature in Docker with a group of virtual or physical machines that lets you schedule, cluster, and run Docker applications. It is a Docker alternative for Kubernetes that provides high portability, agility, and high availability.
Top 12 Kubernetes Alternatives to Choose From in 2023
Docker Swarm is a native clustering and orchestration solution provided by Docker, the leading containerization platform.
Source: humalect.com

OpenCensus Reviews

We have no reviews of OpenCensus yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Docker should be more popular than OpenCensus. It has been mentiond 73 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Docker mentions (73)

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OpenCensus mentions (13)

  • OpenTelemetry Journey #01 - Important concepts
    First of all, let's start with the basics. There are some important concepts to be clarified before we dive into the OpenTelemetry world. The vast majority of the naming conventions and concepts are from projects and papers that inspired OpenTelemetry, such as OpenTracing, OpenCensus and Dapper. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • OpenTelemetry Journey #00 - Introduction to OpenTelemetry
    OpenTelemetry it's a result from the merge of two important projects that are now archived: OpenTracing and OpenCensus. The project is incubated in Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and has a strong community behind it. The CNCF is part of the Linux Foundation and hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes and Prometheus. Currently, OpenTelemetry is the second... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Distributed Tracing with OpenTelemetry - Part I
    OpenTelemetry was born from the merger of two other standards that decided to unify forces instead of competing with each other; these projects were OpenTracing and OpenCensus. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Google Cloud Reference
    OpenCensus: Cloud native observability framework 🔗Link. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Tracing Gorm queries with OpenCensus & Google Cloud Tracing
    At incident.io we use gorm.io as the ORM library for our Postgres database, it's a really powerful tool and one I'm very glad for after years of working with hand-rolled SQL in Go & Postgres apps. You may have seen from our other blog posts that we're heavily invested in tracing, specifically with Google Cloud Tracing via OpenCensus libraries. A huge amount of our application's time is spent talking to Postgres... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Docker and OpenCensus, you can also consider the following products

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

OpenTracing - Consistent, expressive, vendor-neutral APIs for distributed tracing and context propagation.

Rancher - Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service

Thanos.io - Open source, highly available Prometheus setup with long term storage capabilities.

Apache Karaf - Apache Karaf is a lightweight, modern and polymorphic container powered by OSGi.

Metricbeat - Download Metricbeat, the open source tool for shipping metrics from operating systems and services such as Apache web server, Redis, NGINX, and more.