It's great that hftguy thinks Google Container Engine is stable (I work on it) but I'm sorry to say it's very easy to prove that is, in fact, running Docker on the nodes.
You can just SSH into one and see for yourself.
Kubernetes was built from the ground up to orchestrate Docker. CoreOS did a lot of work to make it possible to trade rkt in for Docker's engine, and the cri (Container Runtime Interface) is now generalising that so that there is a clear abstraction between the kubelet and the engines it orchestrates. Read about it here: http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/container-runtime-interfac...
If you want to do things that are different to what we provide support for on GKE as a Managed Service (tm), you're able to run your own Kubernetes clusters on GCE. (We do let you run a Kubernetes alpha version, but only on non-supported clusters that self-destruct after 30 days.
We very recently moved from some bare-metal pet machines into Google GKE and couldn't be happier.
Honestly the hardest thing is keeping up with how fast Kubernetes evolves and gets better and better. The same goes for all Google services (pubsub, bigquery, etc)
We started the migration on Kubernetes 1.1 and are now live on 1.5.1
Even using it for things we probably shouldn't (old stateful applications) without a single problem. At least no Docker related problems.
I don't know, this article seems to be very presumptuous. A lot of bold claims, little backing and, as you state, some pretty false claims.
The default distro is Container Optimised OS: https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/docs/. It's derived from Chromium OS, which means we can take advantage of the team who build images for the many devices which use it, and the security response infrastructure around it.
So, customized Google OS, but using the official Docker package? Oh wait. How could there be an official docker package for an OS noone known existed?
I assume customized kernel as well? and where does the overlay drivers come from? How much custom back-ports and custom development?
The article is not on point to say GKE replaced docker entirely then... but you are not point to deny and pretend that you are running Docker on anything remotely common.
CoreOS is a very similar idea, and given that, we don't make builds of the container images available outside GCE.
Customers who need specifics of the OS (that they can't find them by just looking at the kernel config on the node) are welcome to ping us a support ticket.
You can just SSH into one and see for yourself.
Kubernetes was built from the ground up to orchestrate Docker. CoreOS did a lot of work to make it possible to trade rkt in for Docker's engine, and the cri (Container Runtime Interface) is now generalising that so that there is a clear abstraction between the kubelet and the engines it orchestrates. Read about it here: http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/container-runtime-interfac...
If you want to do things that are different to what we provide support for on GKE as a Managed Service (tm), you're able to run your own Kubernetes clusters on GCE. (We do let you run a Kubernetes alpha version, but only on non-supported clusters that self-destruct after 30 days.