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I'm interested to know why they didn't move to Google AppEngine instead, which offers a better experience and more advanced features overall. Especially conside

by neya 8y ago

I'm interested to know why they didn't move to Google AppEngine instead, which offers a better experience and more advanced features overall. Especially considering that AppEngine is a direct competitor to Heroku than Kubernetes engine.

tlrobinson 8y ago
The post has a whole section called "Why Kubernetes?"
- neya 8y ago
  It doesn't explain "Why not AppEngine"? Which was my question..
  - tlrobinson 8y ago
    Presumably because of all the reasons they chose Kubernetes? FTA: * Kubernetes has a huge amount of traction in the DevOps landscape, with managed implementations from all the major cloud vendors and virtually endless training materials and complementary technologies. * Kubernetes is open source, which was a major plus: it meant that we could avoid vendor lock-in and implement local development environments that mimic production. * Kubernetes has a large feature set that fit well with our requirements, including our more exotic necessities like autoscaling based on custom metrics. AFAIK none of those are true of AppEngine.
    - riku_iki 8y ago
      > Kubernetes has a huge amount of traction in the DevOps landscape the appeal of AppEngine is that you don't need DevOps, google manages and monitors services for you.
      - tlrobinson 8y ago
        That's also true of "managed" Kubernetes platforms like Google Kubernetes Engine and Amazon EKS, the difference being no (or at least less) vendor lock-in.
        ukd1 8y ago
        ^ this is why it won
        riku_iki 8y ago
        But you still need to write your app deployment scripts, integrate logs and monitoring.
    - spyspy 8y ago
      GAE comes with a full local dev setup out of the box. You can even run multiple apps with one command.
    - auslander 8y ago
      > Kubernetes has a huge amount of traction in the DevOps landscape Definition of 'hype' here :)
alasdair_ 8y ago
>I'm interested to know why they didn't move to Google AppEngine instead, which offers a better experience and more advanced features overall. Especially considering that AppEngine is a direct competitor to Heroku than Kubernetes engine. AppEngine has an enormous number of limitations that you only hit once you scale up and gets very expensive very quickly.
- rlancer 8y ago
  Is standard more expensive in reality? Any data on this, flex is certainly very expensive
  - haimez 8y ago
    Flex is not at all very expensive. Per instance cost is about 1/2 the cost compared to heroku, putting it on par with the likes of ECS in terms of cost but ships with usable monitoring, logging, and metrics out of the box with extremely generous free tiers that stay free way longer and that are still marginally cheaper than what you’d pay in AWS land if you exceed them.
- neya 8y ago
  > AppEngine has an enormous number of limitations I have used AppEngine in production for about 50+ clients and I am genuinely really curious to know what these limitations are. Maybe it is dependent on the programming language/framework? I run Phoenix/Elixir with Vue.JS + PostgreSQL as standard for most of my clients, it's really a breeze to work with. In addition, these are the advantages of working with AppEngine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17516530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17516530
  - clhodapp 8y ago
    The AppEngine Standard Java 8 API is severely limited because it is coupled to the Servlet API, which severely screwed up on the design of its async API. As a Scala developer, this limitation pretty much sinks the platform for me, since the flexible environment is really expensive and has a worse value proposition vs managed Kubernetes.

by neya 8y ago

tlrobinson 8y ago

The post has a whole section called "Why Kubernetes?"

neya 8y ago
It doesn't explain "Why not AppEngine"? Which was my question..
- tlrobinson 8y ago
  Presumably because of all the reasons they chose Kubernetes? FTA: * Kubernetes has a huge amount of traction in the DevOps landscape, with managed implementations from all the major cloud vendors and virtually endless training materials and complementary technologies. * Kubernetes is open source, which was a major plus: it meant that we could avoid vendor lock-in and implement local development environments that mimic production. * Kubernetes has a large feature set that fit well with our requirements, including our more exotic necessities like autoscaling based on custom metrics. AFAIK none of those are true of AppEngine.
  - riku_iki 8y ago
    > Kubernetes has a huge amount of traction in the DevOps landscape the appeal of AppEngine is that you don't need DevOps, google manages and monitors services for you.
    - tlrobinson 8y ago
      That's also true of "managed" Kubernetes platforms like Google Kubernetes Engine and Amazon EKS, the difference being no (or at least less) vendor lock-in.
      - ukd1 8y ago
        ^ this is why it won
      - riku_iki 8y ago
        But you still need to write your app deployment scripts, integrate logs and monitoring.
  - spyspy 8y ago
    GAE comes with a full local dev setup out of the box. You can even run multiple apps with one command.
  - auslander 8y ago
    > Kubernetes has a huge amount of traction in the DevOps landscape Definition of 'hype' here :)

alasdair_ 8y ago

>I'm interested to know why they didn't move to Google AppEngine instead, which offers a better experience and more advanced features overall. Especially considering that AppEngine is a direct competitor to Heroku than Kubernetes engine. AppEngine has an enormous number of limitations that you only hit once you scale up and gets very expensive very quickly.

rlancer 8y ago
Is standard more expensive in reality? Any data on this, flex is certainly very expensive
- haimez 8y ago
  Flex is not at all very expensive. Per instance cost is about 1/2 the cost compared to heroku, putting it on par with the likes of ECS in terms of cost but ships with usable monitoring, logging, and metrics out of the box with extremely generous free tiers that stay free way longer and that are still marginally cheaper than what you’d pay in AWS land if you exceed them.
neya 8y ago
> AppEngine has an enormous number of limitations I have used AppEngine in production for about 50+ clients and I am genuinely really curious to know what these limitations are. Maybe it is dependent on the programming language/framework? I run Phoenix/Elixir with Vue.JS + PostgreSQL as standard for most of my clients, it's really a breeze to work with. In addition, these are the advantages of working with AppEngine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17516530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17516530
- clhodapp 8y ago
  The AppEngine Standard Java 8 API is severely limited because it is coupled to the Servlet API, which severely screwed up on the design of its async API. As a Scala developer, this limitation pretty much sinks the platform for me, since the flexible environment is really expensive and has a worse value proposition vs managed Kubernetes.