4 ms·

You've got the wrong impression of what is "boring" tech. A setup out of a rack in a rando datacenter isn't boring, it's frustrating. Saying doing things the ol

by tinco 5y ago

You've got the wrong impression of what is "boring" tech. A setup out of a rack in a rando datacenter isn't boring, it's frustrating. Saying doing things the old way is boring, is like saying sending your wife out to carry water from the well in a jar on her head is boring. We've got running water now, that has nothing to do with double-digit YOY growth, it has to do with actually reliably and comfortably deploying and maintaining our infrastructure by leveraging modern technologies like Kubernetes. I don't know how old you are, but now that I have running water I think to my old and boring setup I cringe at how much work it was to replace or add to an existing cluster, or to replicate it for testing out new features. How out of date the software was, and how easy it would be for an APT to exploit some known-for-years vulnerability in a transitive software dependency. I wish I could afford an SRE in my current startup, but the fact that we can run a decently reliable setup that's easy to keep up to date, expand and modify is thanks to all of that web scale technology trickling down to us small fish. And why not use borg for backups? We still do run Debian (or Ubuntu, but same diff), if it's good it's good.

DrammBA 5y ago
I don't think he's saying he wants to go back to getting water from the well, instead he's saying he's got running water and he's trying to join company that won't expect him to terraform mars with the running water technology.
- tinco 5y ago
  Maybe, but then they're confounding goals. My company isn't web scale, but we still kubernetes-all-the-things, we run two Kubernetes clusters, soon three. One on premise in a "rando datacenter" running both boring old processing pipelines and fancy schmancy machine learning pipelines. And a Kubernetes deployment on GKE in the cloud, that runs a boring old Ruby on Rails + Postgres platform with some satellite microservices, some written in Rust. We're in the boring old sector of real estate maintenance and inspection, but we do it by flying fancy schmancy drones around building 3D models using 100MP photo's and LiDAR scans. DevOps, DevSecOps, Kubernetes, SRE's, they're all buzzwords because they're powerful ideas that will enable you to run a modern IT company effectively. Whether that company is web scale 100% YoY growth, or "simple" manufacturing automation. If you're going in comparing it to terraforming mars, then you're not opening your mind to what's possible on earth with a little bit of learning new stuff.
zozbot234 5y ago
There's plenty of usable middle ground between "rack in a rando datacenter" and doing everything on the cloud. You can leverage VPS hosts, or run the bulk of your workload on prem and use the cloud for infrequent scalability needs.
jf22 5y ago
Ok, I get your point, but the whole point about comparing mature tech to carrying water on your head before running water is ridiculous.
f0e4c2f7 5y ago
I try to make this point to people a lot and can never seen to quite get it across. I really like your running water analogy. Newer technology is usually easier. Especially if you pick the easy stuff. I used to do all these tricks to work infra jobs but not be on call. Now - is it in AWS? Is the app in a container? Is it deployed with Kubernetes? Then I don't even care if there is on call! I've woken up to fix Linux servers in the middle of the night dozens of times. And don't get me wrong - I love Linux. I have yet to have my first "kubernetes broke during the middle of the night" call. Not to say that new tech doesn't have tradeoffs too. But good lord! It's so much harder with old tech. It's like you're purposely doing it harder to prove a point.
- Melatonic 5y ago
  In the last 4 years I have yet to wakeup once running everything on my own servers - all of that has gotten more reliable and easier as well.
Melatonic 5y ago
Who says you can't use Kubernetes and all of your running water tech running your own hardware? Plenty of places do it. Sounds like you just have worked at places who sucked at updating, maintaining, and setting up their own hardware unfortunately. Which I agree can be a huge pain in the ass if done incorrectly.
- tinco 5y ago
  Jup! We run Kubernetes in our own little on premise two racks as well. We use microk8s it was really easy to set up. Jup I've only worked at startups the past decade and never had a mature system administration team so yeah learning the ropes was rough.
muzani 5y ago
I've joined such "boring" companies before. Using SOAP instead of JSON/REST. Using email attachments for source control. Having to download every new version of a dependency and attaching it with Eclipse, instead of it auto downloading when I update the version number. Also my grandma used to have gas lighting and wells. That was fun, but I can't go back to that. I think people just don't like the uncertainty with new tech, but the old ones can be uncertain too.

by tinco 5y ago

DrammBA 5y ago

I don't think he's saying he wants to go back to getting water from the well, instead he's saying he's got running water and he's trying to join company that won't expect him to terraform mars with the running water technology.

tinco 5y ago
Maybe, but then they're confounding goals. My company isn't web scale, but we still kubernetes-all-the-things, we run two Kubernetes clusters, soon three. One on premise in a "rando datacenter" running both boring old processing pipelines and fancy schmancy machine learning pipelines. And a Kubernetes deployment on GKE in the cloud, that runs a boring old Ruby on Rails + Postgres platform with some satellite microservices, some written in Rust. We're in the boring old sector of real estate maintenance and inspection, but we do it by flying fancy schmancy drones around building 3D models using 100MP photo's and LiDAR scans. DevOps, DevSecOps, Kubernetes, SRE's, they're all buzzwords because they're powerful ideas that will enable you to run a modern IT company effectively. Whether that company is web scale 100% YoY growth, or "simple" manufacturing automation. If you're going in comparing it to terraforming mars, then you're not opening your mind to what's possible on earth with a little bit of learning new stuff.

zozbot234 5y ago

There's plenty of usable middle ground between "rack in a rando datacenter" and doing everything on the cloud. You can leverage VPS hosts, or run the bulk of your workload on prem and use the cloud for infrequent scalability needs.

jf22 5y ago

Ok, I get your point, but the whole point about comparing mature tech to carrying water on your head before running water is ridiculous.

f0e4c2f7 5y ago

I try to make this point to people a lot and can never seen to quite get it across. I really like your running water analogy. Newer technology is usually easier. Especially if you pick the easy stuff. I used to do all these tricks to work infra jobs but not be on call. Now - is it in AWS? Is the app in a container? Is it deployed with Kubernetes? Then I don't even care if there is on call! I've woken up to fix Linux servers in the middle of the night dozens of times. And don't get me wrong - I love Linux. I have yet to have my first "kubernetes broke during the middle of the night" call. Not to say that new tech doesn't have tradeoffs too. But good lord! It's so much harder with old tech. It's like you're purposely doing it harder to prove a point.

Melatonic 5y ago
In the last 4 years I have yet to wakeup once running everything on my own servers - all of that has gotten more reliable and easier as well.

Melatonic 5y ago

Who says you can't use Kubernetes and all of your running water tech running your own hardware? Plenty of places do it. Sounds like you just have worked at places who sucked at updating, maintaining, and setting up their own hardware unfortunately. Which I agree can be a huge pain in the ass if done incorrectly.

tinco 5y ago
Jup! We run Kubernetes in our own little on premise two racks as well. We use microk8s it was really easy to set up. Jup I've only worked at startups the past decade and never had a mature system administration team so yeah learning the ropes was rough.

muzani 5y ago

I've joined such "boring" companies before. Using SOAP instead of JSON/REST. Using email attachments for source control. Having to download every new version of a dependency and attaching it with Eclipse, instead of it auto downloading when I update the version number. Also my grandma used to have gas lighting and wells. That was fun, but I can't go back to that. I think people just don't like the uncertainty with new tech, but the old ones can be uncertain too.