6 ms·

This is one of my main problems with the AWS everything advocates. I'm ok with using AWS mostly for a few key things like infrastructure, but I want my tooling

This is one of my main problems with the AWS everything advocates. I'm ok with using AWS mostly for a few key things like infrastructure, but I want my tooling to be independent and able to adapt to other situations. For example,why should I ever use CloudFormation over Ansible or Terraform when it lacks many features and can't be applied to other providers?

zippie 7y ago
I’ve been slowly coming around to this. Also there is no reason why something like salt cannot be adopted into the k8s world, it would bring better base image management capabilities by forcing larger organizations into a common image. A common base image would be easier to patch, upgrade, and maintain. Larger k8s deployments tend to not be so great at image management, which is a cost paid in operations dollars that were supposed to be saved by k8s. What it comes down to is tooling which separates the application enough from the platform where I can move between metal, virtual, and containers without much effort. If this goal is achieved, moving between providers is achieved in tandem.
scarface74 7y ago
Well, then you get the worse of both worlds. Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? You’re spending more on raw resources and just as much on maintenance. As far as Terraform, there is nothing portable about it. Each of its provisioners are cloud specific.
- arminiusreturns 7y ago
  > Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? Is this a serious question? I can value the infrastructure the AWS provides, such as regions and availability zones, while not wanting to get tied into their other services including the managed services for reasons such as business requirements for cloud agnosticism, which is for example one reason I tend to use HAproxy instead of ELB even on stuff on AWS. With CI/CD pipelines applied to infrastructure and a move towards no-ops, the maintenance costs of self-managed infra is reducing more and more. I understand for some shops with a lack of personnel or knowledge to accomplish that self management may want to buy into a holisitic solution, but I think it's awfully intellectually disingenuous to not recognize the potential value of not buying into a holistic solution in certain situations. Also, common, 'cloud specific'? So if I want to spin up my stack on Google or some other platform, I just have to rewrite a few lines of some .tf files. If I want to do that and I'm tied to CloudFormation.... I'm sol...
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Really? You would go as far as managing your own load balancers instead of using a managed, highly available ELB from AWS? Have you tried using Terraform across providers? It’s far more than just “a few lines of codes”. If you just want cross region availability and still manage things yourself, there are much cheaper ways than AWS.
    - arminiusreturns 7y ago
      Yes I would, there are some cases where the featureset is better. Also, it really is just a few lines of code. If you separate out IAC-code and configuration code even if you are running through say a jenkins pipeline it's not much trouble to change a few .tf files around to get the same result on a different provider... You act like writing terraform is hard or convoluted and I don't understand where you are coming from on that. https://github.com/terraform-providers https://github.com/terraform-providers
      - toiletduck 7y ago
        Writing Terraform is easy - having it work after six month of features being delivered, the cloud provider evolving, and working with all your other microservices, isn't particularly. Assuming you can do that and just change a few lines to redeploy in a new cloud environment (imagine that including GKE to EKS) seems naive.
        scarface74 7y ago
        On another note, in the list of top ten things that will add business value and either make the company money or save the company money where does “being cloud agnostic rate”? What competent CTO would go through a migration from one provider to another on a whim? The chance of regression and business interruption is too high and the benefits too low to make it worth it if you’re at any type of scale.
        solidasparagus 7y ago

zippie 7y ago

I’ve been slowly coming around to this. Also there is no reason why something like salt cannot be adopted into the k8s world, it would bring better base image management capabilities by forcing larger organizations into a common image. A common base image would be easier to patch, upgrade, and maintain. Larger k8s deployments tend to not be so great at image management, which is a cost paid in operations dollars that were supposed to be saved by k8s. What it comes down to is tooling which separates the application enough from the platform where I can move between metal, virtual, and containers without much effort. If this goal is achieved, moving between providers is achieved in tandem.

scarface74 7y ago

Well, then you get the worse of both worlds. Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? You’re spending more on raw resources and just as much on maintenance. As far as Terraform, there is nothing portable about it. Each of its provisioners are cloud specific.

arminiusreturns 7y ago
> Why use AWS at all if you’re not using their managed services? Is this a serious question? I can value the infrastructure the AWS provides, such as regions and availability zones, while not wanting to get tied into their other services including the managed services for reasons such as business requirements for cloud agnosticism, which is for example one reason I tend to use HAproxy instead of ELB even on stuff on AWS. With CI/CD pipelines applied to infrastructure and a move towards no-ops, the maintenance costs of self-managed infra is reducing more and more. I understand for some shops with a lack of personnel or knowledge to accomplish that self management may want to buy into a holisitic solution, but I think it's awfully intellectually disingenuous to not recognize the potential value of not buying into a holistic solution in certain situations. Also, common, 'cloud specific'? So if I want to spin up my stack on Google or some other platform, I just have to rewrite a few lines of some .tf files. If I want to do that and I'm tied to CloudFormation.... I'm sol...
- scarface74 7y ago
  Really? You would go as far as managing your own load balancers instead of using a managed, highly available ELB from AWS? Have you tried using Terraform across providers? It’s far more than just “a few lines of codes”. If you just want cross region availability and still manage things yourself, there are much cheaper ways than AWS.
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    Yes I would, there are some cases where the featureset is better. Also, it really is just a few lines of code. If you separate out IAC-code and configuration code even if you are running through say a jenkins pipeline it's not much trouble to change a few .tf files around to get the same result on a different provider... You act like writing terraform is hard or convoluted and I don't understand where you are coming from on that. https://github.com/terraform-providers https://github.com/terraform-providers
    - toiletduck 7y ago
      Writing Terraform is easy - having it work after six month of features being delivered, the cloud provider evolving, and working with all your other microservices, isn't particularly. Assuming you can do that and just change a few lines to redeploy in a new cloud environment (imagine that including GKE to EKS) seems naive.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        On another note, in the list of top ten things that will add business value and either make the company money or save the company money where does “being cloud agnostic rate”? What competent CTO would go through a migration from one provider to another on a whim? The chance of regression and business interruption is too high and the benefits too low to make it worth it if you’re at any type of scale.
        solidasparagus 7y ago