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I don’t get these complaints AT ALL. I don’t use kubernetes, simply because I am running apps in managed environments, and have been using docker-compose with v

I don’t get these complaints AT ALL. I don’t use kubernetes, simply because I am running apps in managed environments, and have been using docker-compose with vscode remote to emulate those environments. But being able to define your resources and how they are linked via a schema, makes sense even from a dev perspective. Isn’t that all that kubernetes is doing at it’s most basic? Sounds like that saves time to me over manually setting everything up for every project you work on.

gjulianm 4y ago
From what I've seen with Kubernetes, the problem is that in order to define the resources and links with a schema, it needs several abstractions and extra tooling. So you not only need to define the schema (which isn't that trivial) but also understand what Kubernetes does, how to work with it, and how to solve problems. It's a tool that adds complexity and difficulty, if you're not using the advantages it provides (mainly multi-node management and scale capabilities) you're just handicapping yourself.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  This is a common misconception. k8s isn't about scale, multi-node or even reliability/resiliency. We had solutions for all of that before it came along. It's about having a standard API for deployment artifacts. The k8s manifests are trivial (if verbose) the complexity comes from running the underlying layer which when you are small you simply outsource to AWS or GCP. There is some k8s know-how that is table stakes for a good experience, namely knowing what extra stuff you need on top of a base k8s cluster. i.e certmanager, external-dns. Overall it's a lot less required knowledge than it takes to manipulate lower level primitives like GCP/AWS directly or be capable of setting up standalone boxes. Before anyone starts with "but serverless!" you need to consider the spagetti you end up with if you go down that route, API Gateway, 100x Lambdas and thousands upon thousands of lines of Terraform boilterplate does not a happy infra team make.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    It would be great if otherwise smart people Also learn to know when what’s trivial to them is not trivial to the masses. K8s is not trivial, not to me at the least. I’m not some super duper engineer but I do alright? That’s all I can say at the least.
    - jpgvm 4y ago
      Have you made a good faith attempt to use k8s? Or are you just regurgitating how hard it is to use based on what you hear on the Internet? My experience is even mediocre engineers are capable of understanding k8s concepts with minimal assistance assuming things are either sufficiently standard (i.e google-able) or well documented with any company specific practices. K8s == hard to run, k8s != hard to use.
      - ramraj07 4y ago
        I have made a good faith attempt at using it, yes. Is spending an entire week on it good faith? I did get everything running but also saw so many settings and features I had to take on faith as being handled without understanding it. I just chose not to bother further because this seems like a minefield of problems in the future as we on boarded other engineers. The number of times I’ve seen production deployments go down due to k8s misconfiguration on other teams has only validated my concerns.
        jpgvm 4y ago
        So what you are saying is everything worked? That sounds like k8s did its job. You aren't meant to fully understand it in a week, anymore than you are expected to fully understand all of sysadmin in a week. Just because you don't know what every single directive in nginx config does doesn't mean you can't use it effectively and learn what they mean when the time comes. k8s isn't much different. You don't need to know what a liveliness probe is the first time you use it, you can learn about it as you go (most likely when you run into a badly behaved program that needs forced restarts when it hangs). Ofcourse if you are running it yourself that is entirely different, you really do need to know how it works to do that but you should be using hosted k8s unless you have hardcore systems folk and actually need that.

gjulianm 4y ago

From what I've seen with Kubernetes, the problem is that in order to define the resources and links with a schema, it needs several abstractions and extra tooling. So you not only need to define the schema (which isn't that trivial) but also understand what Kubernetes does, how to work with it, and how to solve problems. It's a tool that adds complexity and difficulty, if you're not using the advantages it provides (mainly multi-node management and scale capabilities) you're just handicapping yourself.

jpgvm 4y ago
This is a common misconception. k8s isn't about scale, multi-node or even reliability/resiliency. We had solutions for all of that before it came along. It's about having a standard API for deployment artifacts. The k8s manifests are trivial (if verbose) the complexity comes from running the underlying layer which when you are small you simply outsource to AWS or GCP. There is some k8s know-how that is table stakes for a good experience, namely knowing what extra stuff you need on top of a base k8s cluster. i.e certmanager, external-dns. Overall it's a lot less required knowledge than it takes to manipulate lower level primitives like GCP/AWS directly or be capable of setting up standalone boxes. Before anyone starts with "but serverless!" you need to consider the spagetti you end up with if you go down that route, API Gateway, 100x Lambdas and thousands upon thousands of lines of Terraform boilterplate does not a happy infra team make.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  It would be great if otherwise smart people Also learn to know when what’s trivial to them is not trivial to the masses. K8s is not trivial, not to me at the least. I’m not some super duper engineer but I do alright? That’s all I can say at the least.
  - jpgvm 4y ago
    Have you made a good faith attempt to use k8s? Or are you just regurgitating how hard it is to use based on what you hear on the Internet? My experience is even mediocre engineers are capable of understanding k8s concepts with minimal assistance assuming things are either sufficiently standard (i.e google-able) or well documented with any company specific practices. K8s == hard to run, k8s != hard to use.
    - ramraj07 4y ago
      I have made a good faith attempt at using it, yes. Is spending an entire week on it good faith? I did get everything running but also saw so many settings and features I had to take on faith as being handled without understanding it. I just chose not to bother further because this seems like a minefield of problems in the future as we on boarded other engineers. The number of times I’ve seen production deployments go down due to k8s misconfiguration on other teams has only validated my concerns.
      - jpgvm 4y ago
        So what you are saying is everything worked? That sounds like k8s did its job. You aren't meant to fully understand it in a week, anymore than you are expected to fully understand all of sysadmin in a week. Just because you don't know what every single directive in nginx config does doesn't mean you can't use it effectively and learn what they mean when the time comes. k8s isn't much different. You don't need to know what a liveliness probe is the first time you use it, you can learn about it as you go (most likely when you run into a badly behaved program that needs forced restarts when it hangs). Ofcourse if you are running it yourself that is entirely different, you really do need to know how it works to do that but you should be using hosted k8s unless you have hardcore systems folk and actually need that.