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SaaS business single founder here, moved from a mix of GCP's Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, and Compute Engine to DO's managed Postgres and Kubernetes, and it has had th

SaaS business single founder here, moved from a mix of GCP's Cloud Run, Cloud SQL, and Compute Engine to DO's managed Postgres and Kubernetes, and it has had the follow effects: - Much cheaper, reducing bill from >100$/month to ~40$. Important for early stage startups - More performance, easier scaling. Found that my application was much better suited to run in K8S, but this is definitely specific to my use-case - Consolidation of resources. Except Postgres/Redis, everything is in my cluster, simplifying management and maintenance For my business, this was a great move, but as others have said, I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. K8S is a great and powerful tool, but also is very complex.

tebbers 6y ago
Did you experience the downtime issues with DigitalOcean managed Kubernetes that the author also experienced? I'm also considering DOKS so would be great to know!
- CraftThatBlock 6y ago
  I had no issues so far, everything has been fairly smooth. Setup was very easy too (was my first cluster setup), and pricing is very good.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  Note: source for this information is from discussions with DO via support and the kubernetes slack. I am not affiliated with DO in any way. The downtime issues with DOKS are directly related to the resources allocated to the control plane, which is not set up in a HA capacity. The resources assigned are directly related to the size/number of nodes you use. API-heavy applications can very easy knock out the control plane, and in that situation is takes it a (relatively) long time to recover on it's own (I would typically see ~4hr before it became responsive again). Their support team is able to modify the master resources for a given cluster (to assist with recovery), but the turn-around time on that shouldn't be considered "production ready". At this point my advice for DOKS would be: - Are you using very basic, out-of-the-box Kubernetes to host "apps"? You will probably be fine, but be sure to have a back-up. - Are you planning to use Operators, or anything that heavily interacts with the kube-api? I would recommend not using it, or over-provisioning your cluster (which would very quickly offset the advantage of the "free" managed masters). I know that they are working on fixing some of these reliability issues and I have hopes that it will be more stable shortly. At this time I have a "stable" cluster which (unless their support lied to me) had master resources manually increased by their support team after the 3rd incident of it dying. I haven't had an issue since then.
  - tebbers 6y ago
    Thanks for the info. That doesn't sound good - one major reason for considering moving to Kubernetes was for the high availability.
    - nrmitchi 6y ago
      Availability of your applications, and availability of the kubernetes control plane, are not typically correlated. One of the nice things about how Kubernetes orchestrates is that the master is not in the path of requests. Ie, in many situations the Kubernetes master may be unavailable, but your applications will be unaffected and can still serve traffic.
      - tebbers 6y ago
        Thanks for the explanation!
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    What do you mean API heavy? Do you mean hitting the kubernetes API? Does k8s auto scaling count?
    - amzans 6y ago
      I guess he means the Kubernetes API which is what most of the controllers, and other components talk to. That was my case too. It was mostly when I installed the prometheus-operator that things would go south, even if the nodes themselves were perfectly healthy and underutilized.
      - nickthemagicman 6y ago
        Gotcha, thanks for the info! Do you know if were just doing run of the mill Pod deploys of like wordpress and little MVC apps and stuff with no K8s api calls we should be fine? I like the autoscaling and the infrastructure as code, and price for DOKS is good.
Pandabob 6y ago
I’m running something similar and have to admit that the ~70$/month for CloudSQL grinds my gears a little. The pricing for Cloud Run on the other hand is pretty sweet.
- CraftThatBlock 6y ago
  Agree. The databases we're my biggest costs on GCP, and DO offers more for less. Cloud Run, as you said, is pretty great. In my other start-up, we're using Cloud Run and Cloud SQL, and again, Cloud SQL is the biggest cost (~95-99% of the bill)
dobg24 6y ago
Is it okay to touch base with you directly? I would love to hear your feedback and how we can help. Nothing to sell. - PM for DO Kubernetes.
- wdb 6y ago
  I wish companies would have better visibility to allow them to approve DO for cloud stuff. Struggled to get the necessary compliance docs under NDA from DO
  - dobg24 6y ago
    wdb, trust platform reports are available online: https://www.digitalocean.com/trust/certification-reports/ https://www.digitalocean.com/trust/certification-reports/ If you need more than that, the privacy@ email is the right way. https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/pipeda-faq/ https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/pipeda-faq/
- CraftThatBlock 6y ago
  Yes! You can find my email on my profile

tebbers 6y ago

Did you experience the downtime issues with DigitalOcean managed Kubernetes that the author also experienced? I'm also considering DOKS so would be great to know!

CraftThatBlock 6y ago
I had no issues so far, everything has been fairly smooth. Setup was very easy too (was my first cluster setup), and pricing is very good.
nrmitchi 6y ago
Note: source for this information is from discussions with DO via support and the kubernetes slack. I am not affiliated with DO in any way. The downtime issues with DOKS are directly related to the resources allocated to the control plane, which is not set up in a HA capacity. The resources assigned are directly related to the size/number of nodes you use. API-heavy applications can very easy knock out the control plane, and in that situation is takes it a (relatively) long time to recover on it's own (I would typically see ~4hr before it became responsive again). Their support team is able to modify the master resources for a given cluster (to assist with recovery), but the turn-around time on that shouldn't be considered "production ready". At this point my advice for DOKS would be: - Are you using very basic, out-of-the-box Kubernetes to host "apps"? You will probably be fine, but be sure to have a back-up. - Are you planning to use Operators, or anything that heavily interacts with the kube-api? I would recommend not using it, or over-provisioning your cluster (which would very quickly offset the advantage of the "free" managed masters). I know that they are working on fixing some of these reliability issues and I have hopes that it will be more stable shortly. At this time I have a "stable" cluster which (unless their support lied to me) had master resources manually increased by their support team after the 3rd incident of it dying. I haven't had an issue since then.
- tebbers 6y ago
  Thanks for the info. That doesn't sound good - one major reason for considering moving to Kubernetes was for the high availability.
  - nrmitchi 6y ago
    Availability of your applications, and availability of the kubernetes control plane, are not typically correlated. One of the nice things about how Kubernetes orchestrates is that the master is not in the path of requests. Ie, in many situations the Kubernetes master may be unavailable, but your applications will be unaffected and can still serve traffic.
    - tebbers 6y ago
      Thanks for the explanation!
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  What do you mean API heavy? Do you mean hitting the kubernetes API? Does k8s auto scaling count?
  - amzans 6y ago
    I guess he means the Kubernetes API which is what most of the controllers, and other components talk to. That was my case too. It was mostly when I installed the prometheus-operator that things would go south, even if the nodes themselves were perfectly healthy and underutilized.
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      Gotcha, thanks for the info! Do you know if were just doing run of the mill Pod deploys of like wordpress and little MVC apps and stuff with no K8s api calls we should be fine? I like the autoscaling and the infrastructure as code, and price for DOKS is good.

Pandabob 6y ago

I’m running something similar and have to admit that the ~70$/month for CloudSQL grinds my gears a little. The pricing for Cloud Run on the other hand is pretty sweet.

CraftThatBlock 6y ago
Agree. The databases we're my biggest costs on GCP, and DO offers more for less. Cloud Run, as you said, is pretty great. In my other start-up, we're using Cloud Run and Cloud SQL, and again, Cloud SQL is the biggest cost (~95-99% of the bill)

dobg24 6y ago

Is it okay to touch base with you directly? I would love to hear your feedback and how we can help. Nothing to sell. - PM for DO Kubernetes.

wdb 6y ago
I wish companies would have better visibility to allow them to approve DO for cloud stuff. Struggled to get the necessary compliance docs under NDA from DO
- dobg24 6y ago
  wdb, trust platform reports are available online: https://www.digitalocean.com/trust/certification-reports/ https://www.digitalocean.com/trust/certification-reports/ If you need more than that, the privacy@ email is the right way. https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/pipeda-faq/ https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/pipeda-faq/
CraftThatBlock 6y ago
Yes! You can find my email on my profile