Nomad

Nomad is Kubernetes for people who think Kubernetes is overkill. A single binary that orchestrates containers, VMs, Java apps, and batch jobs across 10,000+ nodes — without the YAML hellscape. If K8s is a Swiss Army knife, Nomad is a very sharp chef's knife.

HashiCorp's ecosystem integration is the selling point: Consul for service discovery, Vault for secrets, all working together naturally. Nomad handles 2M+ tasks per cluster where Kubernetes caps around 300k containers. Intel, Autodesk, and GitHub run both side by side. Compared to Kubernetes (more ecosystem, more complexity), Nomad wins on simplicity. Compared to Docker Swarm (simpler but limited), Nomad handles more workload types.

Use this when you need container orchestration without Kubernetes complexity, especially if you already use HashiCorp tools. Skip this if your team already knows K8s well or you need the Kubernetes ecosystem of operators and CRDs.

The catch: the license changed to BSL (Business Source License) in 2023, which restricts competitive use. The community is smaller than Kubernetes, meaning fewer tutorials, operators, and Stack Overflow answers.