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I think the argument there is that it's only simple because the complexity of k8s has been taken away. I don't think anybody has claimed deploying to a k8s clus
by philjohn 5y ago
I think the argument there is that it's only simple because the complexity of k8s has been taken away. I don't think anybody has claimed deploying to a k8s cluster is overly complex; running it well, handling upgrades, those are huge time sinks that need the requisite expertise.
Much like Multics was "simple" for the users, but not for the sysadmins.
- raffraffraff 5y agoTaking the complexity of k8s away was just gonna happen. As someone who built everything from scratch at a previous company, I chose eks at a start-up because it meant that the one-man-systemsguy didn't have to worry about building and hosting every single cog wheel that is required for package repos, OS deployment, configuration management, consul+vault (minimum), and too many other things that k8s does for you. Also, you can send someone on a CKA course and they know how your shit works. Try doing that with the hodge-podge system you built.
- ethbr0 5y agoTraining is a great point, and I think that's why major clouds are going to be stickiest (in terms of using them vs migrating to new things). The central problem of most companies has been finding / affording people who can maintain their stuff. If Amazon / MS / Google can make it simple enough that skilled people can be quickly cross trained, and then have enough architecture knowledge to be productive, that's a huge win over "require everyone to spend 6 months muddling through and learning our stack we built ourselves and partially documented."
- thinkharderdev 5y agoThat's the point though right? A good (couple of) sysadmins can run a k8s cluster that can be leveraged by dozens (even hundreds) of dev teams. Instead of every team having to re-invent the wheel you get a common platform and set of deployment patterns that can fit most any use case. Of course if you don't have multiple different teams (or every team is running their own k8s cluster) then that is definitely a problem. But just because a handful of teams make an ill-advised investment in k8s when they could do easily with something much simpler doesn't mean that k8s is "too complex." Too complex for that use case sure, but for the vast majority of k8s deployments I would wager that it does add a lot of value and subsume a lot of the inherent complexity of running distributed, fault-tolerant, multi-tenant applications.