6 ms·

I'm not sure "a plain ol' Django monolith" with none of the "fancy stuff" is either what people are referring to when they say "kubernetes", or a great choice f

I'm not sure "a plain ol' Django monolith" with none of the "fancy stuff" is either what people are referring to when they say "kubernetes", or a great choice for that. I could run hello world on a Cray but that doesn't mean I can say I do supercomputing. Our team does use it for all the fancy stuff, and spends all day everyday for years now yamling, terraforming, salting, etc so theoretically our setup is "entire application stack as YAML files, fully reproducible", but if it fell apart tomorrow, I'd run for the hills. Basically, I think you're selling it from a position which doesn't use it to any degree which gives sufficient experience required to give in-depth assessment of it. You're selling me a Cray based on your helloworld.

silviogutierrez 6y ago
Reading this charitably: I guess I agree. k8s is definitely overpowered for my needs. And I'm almost certain my blog or my business will never need that full power. Fully aware of that. But I'm not sure one can find something of "the right power" that has the same support from cloud providers, the open source community, the critical mass, etc. [1] Eventually, a standard "simplified" abstraction over k8s will emerge. Many already exist, but they're all over the place. And some are vendor specific (Google Cloud Run is basically just running k8s for you). Then if you need the power, you can eject. Something like Create React App, but by Kubernetes. Create Kubernetes App. [1] Though Nomad looks promising.
- wolco 6y ago
  Curious why run it at all? The cost must be 10 times more this way. It is mostly for the fun of learning. I come from the opposite approach. I have 4 servers two digital ocean $5 and two vulr $2.50 instances. One holds the db. One server as the frontend/code. One server to do heavy work and another to server a heavy site and holds backups. For $15 I'm hosting hundreds of sites, running so many background processes. I couldn't imagine hitting that point where k8s would make sense just for myself unless for fun.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    How do you do automated deployments, though? I don't like using K8s for small stuff, but I am also extremely allergic to having to log on to a server to do anything. Dokku hits the sweet spot for me, but at work I would probably use Nomad instead.
    - vbezhenar 6y ago
      What's wrong with logging in to a server? I love logging in to a server and tinkering with it. Sure, for those who operate fleets of hundreds it's not scalable, but for a few servers that's a pleasure.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        The problem is when you need to duplicate that server or restore it due to some error, you have no idea what all the changes you made are. Besides, it's additional hassle and a chance for things to go wrong, the way I have it set up now is that production gets a new deployment whenever something gets pushed to master and I don't have to do anything else.
        ac29 6y ago
        > The problem is when you need to duplicate that server or restore it due to some error, you have no idea what all the changes you made are. A text file with some setup notes is enough for simple needs, or something like Ansible if its more complex. A lot of web apps aren't much more than some files, a database, and maybe a config file or three (all of which should be versioned and backed up).
        collyw 6y ago
        I would be a lot more confident trying to back up my old school apps than the monstrosity we have on kubernetes we have at present.
        tluyben2 6y ago
- torvald 6y ago
  I was about to, but seems like you answered the question yourself through that footnote.
- hinkley 6y ago
  I'm learning Elixir now, and it's quite confusing to me how one would go about deploying Elixir with K8s. How much you should just let the runtime handle. How much of K8s is just an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Erlang.
- 14u2c 6y ago
  I've been very pleased with Nomad. It strikes a good balance between complexity and the feature set. We use it in production for a medium sized cluster and the migration has been relatively painless. The nomad agent itself is a single binary that bootstraps a cluster using Raft consensus.
- tebbers 6y ago
  > But I'm not sure one can find something of "the right power" that has the same support from cloud providers, the open source community, the critical mass, etc. I totally agree. I would dearly like something simpler than Kubernetes. But there isnt a managed Nomad service, and apparently nothing in between Dokku and managed Kubernetes either.
closeparen 6y ago
>but if it fell apart tomorrow, I'd run for the hills The test is going from zero to production traffic in a new cloud region.

silviogutierrez 6y ago

Reading this charitably: I guess I agree. k8s is definitely overpowered for my needs. And I'm almost certain my blog or my business will never need that full power. Fully aware of that. But I'm not sure one can find something of "the right power" that has the same support from cloud providers, the open source community, the critical mass, etc. [1] Eventually, a standard "simplified" abstraction over k8s will emerge. Many already exist, but they're all over the place. And some are vendor specific (Google Cloud Run is basically just running k8s for you). Then if you need the power, you can eject. Something like Create React App, but by Kubernetes. Create Kubernetes App. [1] Though Nomad looks promising.

wolco 6y ago
Curious why run it at all? The cost must be 10 times more this way. It is mostly for the fun of learning. I come from the opposite approach. I have 4 servers two digital ocean $5 and two vulr $2.50 instances. One holds the db. One server as the frontend/code. One server to do heavy work and another to server a heavy site and holds backups. For $15 I'm hosting hundreds of sites, running so many background processes. I couldn't imagine hitting that point where k8s would make sense just for myself unless for fun.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  How do you do automated deployments, though? I don't like using K8s for small stuff, but I am also extremely allergic to having to log on to a server to do anything. Dokku hits the sweet spot for me, but at work I would probably use Nomad instead.
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    What's wrong with logging in to a server? I love logging in to a server and tinkering with it. Sure, for those who operate fleets of hundreds it's not scalable, but for a few servers that's a pleasure.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      The problem is when you need to duplicate that server or restore it due to some error, you have no idea what all the changes you made are. Besides, it's additional hassle and a chance for things to go wrong, the way I have it set up now is that production gets a new deployment whenever something gets pushed to master and I don't have to do anything else.
      - ac29 6y ago
        > The problem is when you need to duplicate that server or restore it due to some error, you have no idea what all the changes you made are. A text file with some setup notes is enough for simple needs, or something like Ansible if its more complex. A lot of web apps aren't much more than some files, a database, and maybe a config file or three (all of which should be versioned and backed up).
        collyw 6y ago
        I would be a lot more confident trying to back up my old school apps than the monstrosity we have on kubernetes we have at present.
      - tluyben2 6y ago
torvald 6y ago
I was about to, but seems like you answered the question yourself through that footnote.
hinkley 6y ago
I'm learning Elixir now, and it's quite confusing to me how one would go about deploying Elixir with K8s. How much you should just let the runtime handle. How much of K8s is just an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Erlang.
14u2c 6y ago
I've been very pleased with Nomad. It strikes a good balance between complexity and the feature set. We use it in production for a medium sized cluster and the migration has been relatively painless. The nomad agent itself is a single binary that bootstraps a cluster using Raft consensus.
tebbers 6y ago
> But I'm not sure one can find something of "the right power" that has the same support from cloud providers, the open source community, the critical mass, etc. I totally agree. I would dearly like something simpler than Kubernetes. But there isnt a managed Nomad service, and apparently nothing in between Dokku and managed Kubernetes either.

closeparen 6y ago

>but if it fell apart tomorrow, I'd run for the hills The test is going from zero to production traffic in a new cloud region.