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Which features is Nomad missing? Feature count comparisons are meaningless unless the features are tied to actual important use cases. Lots of software is encru

by api 6y ago

Which features is Nomad missing? Feature count comparisons are meaningless unless the features are tied to actual important use cases. Lots of software is encrusted with rarely used features that just add complexity.

4636760295 6y ago
The main missing feature is that it's not kubernetes.
- aganame 6y ago
  You have an extra word there.
SteveNuts 6y ago
For us it's not a feature missing, but the mindshare is low, and there's not really any prebuilt examples of how to run and maintain services long term reliably.
DavyJone 6y ago
Does it have "easy" side-cars/init/post? Last time I checked those were missing for example.
- adadgar 6y ago
  It does! Here is the relevant documentation and examples: https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/lifecycle/ https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/lifecycle... https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob
  - DavyJone 6y ago
    Ill check that out, I really think K8s is becoming a bit too complex for many customers. Thanks!
q3k 6y ago
The free version of Nomad is missing, IIUC: - no quotas for teams/projects/organizations - no preemption (ie higher priority job preempts lower priority job) - no namespacing So generally it's somewhat useless in organizations where there are multiple different teams that should be able to coexist on a cluster without stepping on eachothers' toes, or even where you want a CI system to access the cluster in a safe manner.
- chucky_z 6y ago
  Preemption is coming in the next release in OSS :)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- BurritoAlPastor 6y ago
  We run everything in Nomad for all our teams, but we don’t use any of the features you mention, and it’s not causing issues. We wrote some metrics for how much memory all the allocations are claiming, and we throw another EC2 instance in the cluster when we’re running out. Works pretty well. Preemption seems like a nice feature, but I imagine getting teams to coordinate their preemption values would be a political nightmare.
  - q3k 6y ago
    For me the ability to squeeze in some jobs in between the cracks at best effort priority is crucial (ie. any sort of high latency batch processing / experiments). I wouldn't want these extremely low priority jobs to compete with, I don't know, an actual customer facing service. Also, we run on bare metal, so there really isn't a way to request extra capacity within seconds.
- schmichael 6y ago
  Preemption is going OSS! https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md We fully intend to migrate more features to OSS in the future -- especially as we build out more enterprise features. As you can imagine building a sustainable business is quite the balancing act, and there's constant internal discussion. (I'm the Nomad Team Lead at HashiCorp)
syllogism 6y ago
A few long-standing feature requests I've noticed a lot: * No autoscaling * Can't reserve entire CPU core: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/289 https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/289 * No way to run jobs sequentially: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/419 https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/419
- jambay 6y ago
  Autoscaling is in Tech Preview as of March: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-nomad-autoscaling-tech-preview/ https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-nomad-autoscaling-t... Disclaimer: I work at HashiCorp in Product Management.
  - syllogism 6y ago
    Nice! It's definitely been one of the bigger holes. I hope you'll also consider sequential tasks in a single jobfile. Without it it's kind of awkward because you have to be passing shell scripts around just to run a setup step before your actual workload.
    - nickethier 6y ago
      We’ve also started to implement this with a new task dependencies feature in the latest release. Check out: https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/preview-of-nomad-0-11-task-dependencies/ https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/preview-of-nomad-0-11-ta... https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob There’s more work going on there to further improve the feature in upcoming releases. Disclaimer: I’m an engineer on the Nomad team.

by api 6y ago

4636760295 6y ago

The main missing feature is that it's not kubernetes.

aganame 6y ago
You have an extra word there.

SteveNuts 6y ago

For us it's not a feature missing, but the mindshare is low, and there's not really any prebuilt examples of how to run and maintain services long term reliably.

DavyJone 6y ago

Does it have "easy" side-cars/init/post? Last time I checked those were missing for example.

adadgar 6y ago
It does! Here is the relevant documentation and examples: https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/lifecycle/ https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/lifecycle... https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob
- DavyJone 6y ago
  Ill check that out, I really think K8s is becoming a bit too complex for many customers. Thanks!

q3k 6y ago

The free version of Nomad is missing, IIUC: - no quotas for teams/projects/organizations - no preemption (ie higher priority job preempts lower priority job) - no namespacing So generally it's somewhat useless in organizations where there are multiple different teams that should be able to coexist on a cluster without stepping on eachothers' toes, or even where you want a CI system to access the cluster in a safe manner.

chucky_z 6y ago
Preemption is coming in the next release in OSS :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
BurritoAlPastor 6y ago
We run everything in Nomad for all our teams, but we don’t use any of the features you mention, and it’s not causing issues. We wrote some metrics for how much memory all the allocations are claiming, and we throw another EC2 instance in the cluster when we’re running out. Works pretty well. Preemption seems like a nice feature, but I imagine getting teams to coordinate their preemption values would be a political nightmare.
- q3k 6y ago
  For me the ability to squeeze in some jobs in between the cracks at best effort priority is crucial (ie. any sort of high latency batch processing / experiments). I wouldn't want these extremely low priority jobs to compete with, I don't know, an actual customer facing service. Also, we run on bare metal, so there really isn't a way to request extra capacity within seconds.
schmichael 6y ago
Preemption is going OSS! https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md We fully intend to migrate more features to OSS in the future -- especially as we build out more enterprise features. As you can imagine building a sustainable business is quite the balancing act, and there's constant internal discussion. (I'm the Nomad Team Lead at HashiCorp)

syllogism 6y ago

A few long-standing feature requests I've noticed a lot: * No autoscaling * Can't reserve entire CPU core: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/289 https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/289 * No way to run jobs sequentially: https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/419 https://github.com/hashicorp/nomad/issues/419

jambay 6y ago
Autoscaling is in Tech Preview as of March: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-nomad-autoscaling-tech-preview/ https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/hashicorp-nomad-autoscaling-t... Disclaimer: I work at HashiCorp in Product Management.
- syllogism 6y ago
  Nice! It's definitely been one of the bigger holes. I hope you'll also consider sequential tasks in a single jobfile. Without it it's kind of awkward because you have to be passing shell scripts around just to run a setup step before your actual workload.
  - nickethier 6y ago
    We’ve also started to implement this with a new task dependencies feature in the latest release. Check out: https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/preview-of-nomad-0-11-task-dependencies/ https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/preview-of-nomad-0-11-ta... https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/task-deps/interjob There’s more work going on there to further improve the feature in upcoming releases. Disclaimer: I’m an engineer on the Nomad team.