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Kubernetes Maximalism

5 points by rckrd 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
Kubernetes makes IBM's 1990s-era mainframe framework Parallel Sysplex look simple.
- rckrd 5y ago
  There's a prevailing narrative that Kubernetes is insanely complex. Probably driven by vendor FUD - if it isn't so complex, why should you pay someone else to do it for you? I think eventually customers will realize that there's not as much magic under the hood.
rektide 5y ago
I feel like these & most arguments try to make kubernetes sound competitive versus other development environments. But like most posts, it doesn't talk up Kubernetes on it's own terms. Right now we regard it as a platform, a place for building apps, which will continue talking to redis and postgres and memcache as usual. I've yet to seeuch advocacy of real kubernetes maximalism, of preaching development of cloud native apps. Rather than passing configmaps of configuration, and storing entities in databases, rather than processing commands & returning results, I want to imagine more state externalized into our cloud, I want to imagine more declarative systems where we first declare state and then controllers/operators enact it, as a way of developing our apps. There's a lot of thoughtleadering that limits cloud native development practices to something suitable for platform, but imo we should be embracing & looking at which strengths of architecture we can adopt more broadly, & taking those lessons to our everyday app building. The way of kubernetes has much to each us. I also think there's a lot of argumentation related to this about having single pane of glass interfaces, about having total systems integration & visibility that the old diy build your own ops stacks & local environments could not offer without enormous effort.
- rckrd 5y ago
  On more state externalized to the cloud - Kubernetes is the logical choice. To do that, you need to match dev/prod parity, and you need to have service abstractions so you can easily swap out components. For more declarative systems - Kubernetes gets us close. We've seen that systems that are "too declarative" like Bazel are too cumbersome for developers to do. What developers need in an environment is just declarative enough to diff - which Kubernetes provides for infra, and tools like skaffold provide for applications.

5 points by rckrd 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago

Kubernetes makes IBM's 1990s-era mainframe framework Parallel Sysplex look simple.

rckrd 5y ago
There's a prevailing narrative that Kubernetes is insanely complex. Probably driven by vendor FUD - if it isn't so complex, why should you pay someone else to do it for you? I think eventually customers will realize that there's not as much magic under the hood.

rektide 5y ago

I feel like these & most arguments try to make kubernetes sound competitive versus other development environments. But like most posts, it doesn't talk up Kubernetes on it's own terms. Right now we regard it as a platform, a place for building apps, which will continue talking to redis and postgres and memcache as usual. I've yet to seeuch advocacy of real kubernetes maximalism, of preaching development of cloud native apps. Rather than passing configmaps of configuration, and storing entities in databases, rather than processing commands & returning results, I want to imagine more state externalized into our cloud, I want to imagine more declarative systems where we first declare state and then controllers/operators enact it, as a way of developing our apps. There's a lot of thoughtleadering that limits cloud native development practices to something suitable for platform, but imo we should be embracing & looking at which strengths of architecture we can adopt more broadly, & taking those lessons to our everyday app building. The way of kubernetes has much to each us. I also think there's a lot of argumentation related to this about having single pane of glass interfaces, about having total systems integration & visibility that the old diy build your own ops stacks & local environments could not offer without enormous effort.

rckrd 5y ago
On more state externalized to the cloud - Kubernetes is the logical choice. To do that, you need to match dev/prod parity, and you need to have service abstractions so you can easily swap out components. For more declarative systems - Kubernetes gets us close. We've seen that systems that are "too declarative" like Bazel are too cumbersome for developers to do. What developers need in an environment is just declarative enough to diff - which Kubernetes provides for infra, and tools like skaffold provide for applications.