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My thesis isn't that Kubernetes isn't good, nor that it isn't successful (I use it, recommend it and am deeply grateful for it). Rather I'm disappointed that th

by tombh 5y ago

My thesis isn't that Kubernetes isn't good, nor that it isn't successful (I use it, recommend it and am deeply grateful for it). Rather I'm disappointed that the documentary doesn't pay respects to the milieu that primed the world for Kubernetes, which to me makes it seem like Google also inspired the mindset and demand for something like Kubernetes, which I personally believe is inaccurate and more importantly unfair on the many innovative projects upon whose shoulders Kubernetes stands.

andrewmutz 5y ago
Didn't Google's Borg precede Heroku by years? Surely its unfair to claim that they "brought little more to the table than money and influence"
- tombh 5y ago
  I think it's clear in everyone's minds that right from the start Kubernetes was making Docker a first class citizen right? Borg did not use Docker. Borg may well be the technical ancestor of Kubernetes, but Kubernetes owes significantly more to the paradigm shift and cultural revolution that Docker brought. Therefore I believe it's more relevant to consider Docker the inspiration and ancestor of Kubernetes.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    Borg didn't use docker containers, but does use containers, they're just a form of containers that are propriety and predate docker by a decade (but like they're functionally really similar to docker containers, at least from the perspective of the orchestration layer). So docker is maybe the thing that allowed kubernetes to catch on, but that's just because the external world was catching up to what borg had been doing for more than a decade, and so kubernetes was Google sticking a decade or more of expertise in container orchestration into the OSS world.
    - tombh 5y ago
      I just don't think it's fair to define Docker by merely its ability to isolate resources (that which distinguishes containers from VMs). Docker is an entire ecosystem of best practices, standards, tooling, packaging, documentation and community support. Google caught up to Docker not the other way round.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        > Docker is an entire ecosystem of best practices, standards, tooling, packaging, documentation and community support. When kubernetes was released, the majority of that ecosystem didn't yet exist. Kubernetes influenced many of those best practices, standards, and tooling. So in shaping the ecosystem, yes, docker was catching up to Google. Like I think this would be a reasonable argument if Kubernetes was released today, but it was released only about a year after Docker was. (heck, iirc, even docker as a tool was originally built on LXC, which I think google functionally upstreamed as part of borg hypervisor stuff, but I could be mistaken there. I do know that LXC was based on Google work though: https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/22/decade-container-control-google/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/22/decade-container-con...) Edit: Ok yeah I think I figured it out, cgroups is the borg upstreamed feature (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506800), LXC and evenutally docker are built atop cgroups, etc. etc. So the entire modern containerization infra is built atop a feature borg upstreamed.
        tombh 5y ago
        We might be going in circles a bit here. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding something. Docker was released with Dockerfiles, registry support (maybe not Docker Hub, I don't remember), a generous CLI; `start`, `build`, `ps`, etc. So I would very much say the majority of the ecosystem existed before Kubernetes. Yes LXC and cgroups were Google contributions before the existence of Docker. But jails and containers in general were also general ideas before LXC and cgroups, I think most notably in BSD. I feel like we must have had different experiences of that period 8 or so years ago. I distinctly remember the hype and bandwagon feeling of Docker's release. I remember various projects trying to capitalise on Docker to make PaaS-type projects; Swarm, Deis, Flynn (even my own Peas project), before Kubernetes came along. It seems so clear to me that Google were reactive rather than proactive. I really don't think Kubernetes would be a thing without Docker.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Linux containers were important, but Docker gets a lot of credit for popularizing them. Even still, Kubernetes makes containers dramatically more useful than just running a bunch of Docker containers on EC2 instances or whatever. Not only does it schedule containers, but it enables controllers and operators for enabling increasingly higher levels of abstraction. I don’t think Heroku has any analog (nor should it because Heroku is a PaaS).
    - tombh 5y ago
      But there were/are many projects that offer those higher levels of abstraction on top of Docker; Deis, Flynn, Rancher, Fleet. I just don't think Kubernetes was that innovative in that regard. It won out because I mean of course it's a fantastic piece of software, that's a given, but the differentiating factor is Google's brand, not any particular technical novelty.
throwaway894345 5y ago
I think “primed the world” is a much more defensible position than what I originally thought you were arguing (that Heroku influenced Kubernetes directly).
- tombh 5y ago
  Sorry if I caused any confusion, that's exactly my point. I didn't mean to imply that Heroku directly influenced the design and architecture of Kubernetes.

by tombh 5y ago

andrewmutz 5y ago

Didn't Google's Borg precede Heroku by years? Surely its unfair to claim that they "brought little more to the table than money and influence"

tombh 5y ago
I think it's clear in everyone's minds that right from the start Kubernetes was making Docker a first class citizen right? Borg did not use Docker. Borg may well be the technical ancestor of Kubernetes, but Kubernetes owes significantly more to the paradigm shift and cultural revolution that Docker brought. Therefore I believe it's more relevant to consider Docker the inspiration and ancestor of Kubernetes.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  Borg didn't use docker containers, but does use containers, they're just a form of containers that are propriety and predate docker by a decade (but like they're functionally really similar to docker containers, at least from the perspective of the orchestration layer). So docker is maybe the thing that allowed kubernetes to catch on, but that's just because the external world was catching up to what borg had been doing for more than a decade, and so kubernetes was Google sticking a decade or more of expertise in container orchestration into the OSS world.
  - tombh 5y ago
    I just don't think it's fair to define Docker by merely its ability to isolate resources (that which distinguishes containers from VMs). Docker is an entire ecosystem of best practices, standards, tooling, packaging, documentation and community support. Google caught up to Docker not the other way round.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      > Docker is an entire ecosystem of best practices, standards, tooling, packaging, documentation and community support. When kubernetes was released, the majority of that ecosystem didn't yet exist. Kubernetes influenced many of those best practices, standards, and tooling. So in shaping the ecosystem, yes, docker was catching up to Google. Like I think this would be a reasonable argument if Kubernetes was released today, but it was released only about a year after Docker was. (heck, iirc, even docker as a tool was originally built on LXC, which I think google functionally upstreamed as part of borg hypervisor stuff, but I could be mistaken there. I do know that LXC was based on Google work though: https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/22/decade-container-control-google/ https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/22/decade-container-con...) Edit: Ok yeah I think I figured it out, cgroups is the borg upstreamed feature (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9506800), LXC and evenutally docker are built atop cgroups, etc. etc. So the entire modern containerization infra is built atop a feature borg upstreamed.
      - tombh 5y ago
        We might be going in circles a bit here. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding something. Docker was released with Dockerfiles, registry support (maybe not Docker Hub, I don't remember), a generous CLI; `start`, `build`, `ps`, etc. So I would very much say the majority of the ecosystem existed before Kubernetes. Yes LXC and cgroups were Google contributions before the existence of Docker. But jails and containers in general were also general ideas before LXC and cgroups, I think most notably in BSD. I feel like we must have had different experiences of that period 8 or so years ago. I distinctly remember the hype and bandwagon feeling of Docker's release. I remember various projects trying to capitalise on Docker to make PaaS-type projects; Swarm, Deis, Flynn (even my own Peas project), before Kubernetes came along. It seems so clear to me that Google were reactive rather than proactive. I really don't think Kubernetes would be a thing without Docker.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Linux containers were important, but Docker gets a lot of credit for popularizing them. Even still, Kubernetes makes containers dramatically more useful than just running a bunch of Docker containers on EC2 instances or whatever. Not only does it schedule containers, but it enables controllers and operators for enabling increasingly higher levels of abstraction. I don’t think Heroku has any analog (nor should it because Heroku is a PaaS).
  - tombh 5y ago
    But there were/are many projects that offer those higher levels of abstraction on top of Docker; Deis, Flynn, Rancher, Fleet. I just don't think Kubernetes was that innovative in that regard. It won out because I mean of course it's a fantastic piece of software, that's a given, but the differentiating factor is Google's brand, not any particular technical novelty.

throwaway894345 5y ago

I think “primed the world” is a much more defensible position than what I originally thought you were arguing (that Heroku influenced Kubernetes directly).

tombh 5y ago
Sorry if I caused any confusion, that's exactly my point. I didn't mean to imply that Heroku directly influenced the design and architecture of Kubernetes.