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Repeating my reply to this question asked by someone else above. I genuinely want to engage people on this question. --- My problem with Kubernetes is people

by movedx 7y ago

Repeating my reply to this question asked by someone else above. I genuinely want to engage people on this question. --- My problem with Kubernetes is people adopt it without understanding it. They adopt it because everyone else is without ever asking, "Why?" I've installed and managed a simple K8s cluster before now and it was a nightmare (this was only a year ago.) It wasn't until we moved the management of the cluster to a managed service that it became worth it. It was at THAT point it was worth containerising the application(s) (another complexity to overcome) and letting K8s handle the deployment and scaling. I'm worried that as an engineering culture we're not pushing back enough and saying, "Yeah K8s is cool but look: do you really need it? It's very likely you don't". For me to automatically recommend K8s to my clients I'd need to see a (near) zero friction deployment options that's fully feature compliant and truely fully managed. It's at that point I would be happy to say, "Sure! Let's go with K8s and just write YAML files to deploy our containers!" (And then there's the whole debate as to whether or not you even need a container around your monolith... probably not. Then the next debate about people starting out with microservices when we all know that's not a good idea.)

ar_lan 7y ago
I work with Kubernetes quite a bit, so I'm reasonably knowledgable on the pro's and con's. I definitely think there is a misunderstanding about what Kubernetes solves. I think Kubernetes is very good at helping structure very large applications where a split of micro-services makes sense. Most start-ups don't need it - it's likely overkill, and unless you go with a vendor you're likely to set it up incorrectly. But it is an advantage in much larger, spread out teams if the culture surrounding all the teams makes sense. If sub-teams can handle their applications really well, which many companies have achieved, then it does provide significant benefits over monoliths. I think the problem you're noticing is that everyone wants to jump onto Kubernetes without realizing why it's even there - the same with micro-services. I shudder when I hear that from my friends with no more than 10 people on their development team, but I think it makes a lot more sense when I see teams of >200 complaining that their huge monolith is what causes the most friction.
- movedx 7y ago
  Absolutely spot on. This is my experience too and this is also howI feel about it. It's an excellent piece of kit, but like most tools it has to be not only used correctly but also in the right context.

by movedx 7y ago

ar_lan 7y ago

I work with Kubernetes quite a bit, so I'm reasonably knowledgable on the pro's and con's. I definitely think there is a misunderstanding about what Kubernetes solves. I think Kubernetes is very good at helping structure very large applications where a split of micro-services makes sense. Most start-ups don't need it - it's likely overkill, and unless you go with a vendor you're likely to set it up incorrectly. But it is an advantage in much larger, spread out teams if the culture surrounding all the teams makes sense. If sub-teams can handle their applications really well, which many companies have achieved, then it does provide significant benefits over monoliths. I think the problem you're noticing is that everyone wants to jump onto Kubernetes without realizing why it's even there - the same with micro-services. I shudder when I hear that from my friends with no more than 10 people on their development team, but I think it makes a lot more sense when I see teams of >200 complaining that their huge monolith is what causes the most friction.

movedx 7y ago
Absolutely spot on. This is my experience too and this is also howI feel about it. It's an excellent piece of kit, but like most tools it has to be not only used correctly but also in the right context.