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LXC VS Apache Mesos

Compare LXC VS Apache Mesos and see what are their differences

LXC logo LXC

LXC by Linuxcontainers.org is a set of tools, templates, library and language bindings. It's pretty low level, very flexible and covers just about every containment feature supported by the upstream kernel.

Apache Mesos logo Apache Mesos

Apache Mesos abstracts resources away from machines, enabling fault-tolerant and elastic distributed systems to easily be built and run effectively.
  • LXC Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-30
  • Apache Mesos Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

LXC features and specs

  • Lightweight
    LXC containers share the host operating system's kernel, resulting in lower overhead compared to virtual machines. This means higher efficiency and speed, ideal for applications requiring fast start-up times and lower resource usage.
  • Resource Isolation
    LXC provides a level of resource isolation, allowing users to manage CPU, memory, and other resources per container, which helps in optimizing resource allocation and ensuring better performance.
  • Flexibility
    LXC offers a high degree of flexibility, allowing users to run a variety of workloads, from simple applications to complex, multi-service environments, due to its lightweight nature and ease of management.
  • Security
    LXC provides a secure environment through namespace isolation, cgroups, and other Linux security modules, enhancing the security by isolating the processes within containers from the host system.
  • Ecosystem and Support
    LXC benefits from a robust ecosystem and community support, providing numerous tools and integrations with other systems, making it easier to deploy, manage, and orchestrate containers.

Possible disadvantages of LXC

  • Complex Networking
    Setting up advanced networking configurations can be complicated in LXC, as it may require manual intervention and a deep understanding of networking concepts to achieve the desired network setup.
  • Learning Curve
    For users new to Linux containers, the learning curve might be steep, requiring a solid understanding of Linux kernel features and command-line operations to effectively use LXC.
  • Not a Full Virtualization
    As an OS-level virtualization, LXC shares the host’s kernel, limiting its use to scenarios where the same OS family is required. Unlike full VMs, it cannot run operating systems with different kernels.
  • Security Concerns
    Although LXC improves security by isolating processes, it is not as secure as traditional virtual machines where the hypervisor provides separation, as containers share the host's kernel.
  • Limited Windows Support
    LXC is primarily designed for Linux environments, which limits its usability in Windows-based infrastructures unless used through compatibility layers or subsystems, which may add complexity.

Apache Mesos features and specs

  • Scalability
    Apache Mesos is designed to scale to thousands of nodes, making it ideal for large-scale distributed systems.
  • Resource Isolation
    Mesos uses containerization techniques (like Docker and Mesos containers) to provide resource isolation, ensuring applications run in their own secure environments.
  • Fault Tolerance
    The framework is built with fault tolerance in mind. It continuously monitors the health of all nodes and can move tasks from failing nodes to healthy ones.
  • Multi-Framework Support
    Mesos can manage multiple types of workloads through different frameworks like Apache Spark, Apache Hadoop, and Kubernetes simultaneously on the same cluster.
  • Resource Efficient
    It provides fine-grained resource allocation, allowing multiple applications to share a single cluster, which leads to more efficient resource utilization.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Mesos

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Setting up and managing a Mesos cluster can be complex and requires a thorough understanding of the framework and its components.
  • Operational Complexity
    Mesos requires additional components like Marathon (for container orchestration) which adds to the operational overhead.
  • Maturity
    While Mesos is a robust system, it may not be as mature or feature-rich as some cloud-native solutions like Kubernetes, which have seen wider adoption.
  • Community Support
    As Mesos is somewhat overshadowed by Kubernetes, it has a smaller community and fewer third-party integrations compared to more popular orchestration tools.
  • Ecosystem Integration
    Many new-age DevOps tools and CI/CD pipelines are primarily designed with Kubernetes in mind, which might result in limited integration capabilities with Mesos.

Analysis of Apache Mesos

Overall verdict

  • Apache Mesos is a strong choice for organizations looking for a scalable and flexible resource management system, especially if they have diverse workloads that require efficient orchestration. However, its complexity might pose a challenge for smaller teams or use cases that do not require such extensive features.

Why this product is good

  • Apache Mesos is known for its ability to abstract the entire data center into a single pool of resources, thus simplifying resource management and allocation for distributed systems. It allows for efficient sharing of resources across different applications and offers strong support for container orchestration, microservices, and big data applications. Mesos is highly adaptable and can work with a variety of different workload types, making it suitable for diverse environments.

Recommended for

  • Large organizations with complex infrastructure needs.
  • Teams that require high scalability and flexibility.
  • Projects that involve big data frameworks like Apache Spark or Hadoop.
  • Development environments necessitating custom resource scheduling.

LXC videos

TRIBE ARCHIPELAGO LXC PRESET REVIEW (PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM CC)

More videos:

  • Demo - LXC VS INDIA EARL PRESETS | REVIEW + DEMO
  • Review - Watch Before You Buy! Cocraft LXC CS18 - Review [0034]

Apache Mesos videos

Reactive Stream Processing Using Apache Mesos

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to LXC and Apache Mesos)
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
25 25%
75% 75
DevOps Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Virtualization
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare LXC and Apache Mesos

LXC Reviews

Top 10 Best Container Software in 2022
LXC is the acronym for Linux Containers which is a type of OS-level virtualization method for executing numerous isolated Linux systems(containers) sitting on a control host employing a single Linux Kernel. This is an open source tool under the GNU LGPL License. It is available on the GitHub Repository.
Docker Alternatives
The 3 main components of LXC Container include LXC, LXD which is the runtime component, a Daemon thread developed in GO. This component manages containers and images. The third component is LXFUSE. This component manages the file systems. LXC is an older, more popular but a lower level set of tools. LXD component expands on LXC thus offering a better User Interface and CLI...
Source: www.educba.com
5 Container Alternatives to Docker
Next up, 1 percent of containers were LXC Linux Containers in 2018. Nicknamed “chroot on steroids,” LXC dates back before Docker picked up steam. Thus, LXC has a pretty active community around it.

Apache Mesos Reviews

Docker Alternatives
Another Docker alternative is Apache Mesos. This tool is designed to leverage the features of modern kernels in order to carry out functions like resource isolation, prioritization, limiting & accounting. These functions are generally carried out by groups in the Linux or zones in the Solaris. What Mesos does is, it provides isolation for the Memory, I/O devices, file...
Source: www.educba.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, LXC should be more popular than Apache Mesos. It has been mentiond 38 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.

LXC mentions (38)

  • Beyond Docker - A DevOps Engineer's Guide to Container Alternatives
    Working with legacy applications that needed full system access taught me that a different way to do containerization is by using LXC/LXD. The focus in system containers, rather than application containers, can be thought of like a light VM rather than what most consider the typical container. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Top 8 Docker Alternatives to Consider in 2025
    LXC provides system-level containerization, offering a different approach focused on creating environments that more closely resemble traditional virtual machines. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • RunCVM: An open-source Docker runtime for launching container images in VMs
    What situations would make this better than LXC? https://linuxcontainers.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Top 5 Docker Alternatives for Software Developers in 2024
    Linux Container Daemon (LXD) is a container and virtual machine manager developed by Canonical. It provides flexibility by offering a single process for multiple containers. It connects to the Linux container library (LXC) using a REST API. It is an add-on to LXC, providing more features and functionalities. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • A Brief History Of Serverless
    Docker introduced their new container technology at PyCon 2013. At this time, Docker containers were just a wrapper for Linux Containers but this fundamentally changed the landscape of computing (more on this later). - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

Apache Mesos mentions (11)

  • Erlang's not about lightweight processes and message passing
    Erlang, OTP, and the BEAM offer much more than just behaviours. The VM is similar to a virtual kernel with supervisor, isolated processes, and distributed mode that treats multiple (physical or virtual) machines as a single pool of resources. OTP provides numerous useful modes, such as Mnesia (database) and atomic counters/ETS tables (for caching), among others. The runtime also supports bytecode hot-reloading, a... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • Kubernetes Simplified: A Comprehensive Introduction for Beginners
    Apache Mesos, a robust cluster manager, excels at handling diverse workloads beyond just containers, offering flexibility for organizations with varying needs. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Containers Orchestration and Kubernetes
    Even though this article will be focused on Kubernetes I want to mention that there are multiple container orchestration platforms such as Mesos, Docker Swarm, OpenShift, Rancher, Hashicorp Nomad, etc. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • eBPF, sidecars, and the future of the service mesh
    I worked at several Bay Area startups, mainly in NLP and machine learning roles. I was part of a company called PowerSet, which was building a natural language processing engine and was acquired by Microsoft. I then joined Twitter in its early days, around 2010, when it had about 200 employees. I started on the AI side but transitioned to infrastructure because I found it more satisfying and challenging. We were... - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Upgrading Hundreds of Kubernetes Clusters
    When we adopted Kubernetes at Criteo, we encountered initial hurdles. In 2018, Kubernetes operators were still new, and there was internal competition from Mesos. We addressed these challenges by validating Kubernetes performance for our specific needs and building custom Chef recipes, StatefulSet hooks, and startup scripts. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing LXC and Apache Mesos, you can also consider the following products

VirtualBox - VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as...

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

Proxmox VE - Proxmox is an open-source server virtualization management solution that offers the ability to manage virtual server technology with the Linux OpenVZ and KVM technology.

Charity Engine - Charity Engine takes enormous, expensive computing jobs and chops them into 1000s of small pieces...

Hyper-V - Install Hyper-V on Windows 10

BOINC - BOINC is an open-source software platform for computing using volunteered resources