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Do you think running k8s at home is worthwhile, past the learning experience and cool factor? I have a nice server that I used for 10-20 applications like Time

Do you think running k8s at home is worthwhile, past the learning experience and cool factor? I have a nice server that I used for 10-20 applications like Time Machine backup, media streaming, file syncing, home automation, etc. I was looking into k8s, but it seemed way too complicated when I only have one physical server, so I went with Docker + Docker Compose instead.

rschachte 4y ago
If I was in your situation, probably not. We use it a lot at work, so it’s a playground to grow my skills and play around while doubling as a painless way to host anything. All in all, I still think docker, docker compose and nginx is the way to go for hobbyist stuff. I doubt my ISP would let me host anything at a huge scale off my home router anyways.
- shepherdjerred 4y ago
  nginx is great, but I've also been hearing good things about caddy[0]. I want to check it out soon. [0]: https://caddyserver.com/v2 https://caddyserver.com/v2
SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
If you were to bring on two more servers it would probably be worth it. 3 is the magic number for when k3s starts to bring more interesting stuff to the table in terms of reliability and dynamic behaviors.
cmehdy 4y ago
All the maintenance you put towards getting things running right now will be maintenance you put towards making sure your cluster is doing what you need and want. If you start having more servers, a k8s cluster can do something like automatically transfer workloads when one machine has an issue for example, or dynamically allocating storage (even cloud) when needed, or allowing you to issue a single command to spin up more instance of whatever task you'd want to run more in parallel, or updating a version in a config file and letting the cluster do the job of stopping/updating/restarting things. But what you also have to do is ensure the underlying networking between machines works, all versions of the binaries on all the machines of the cluster are in close agreement with each others, encryption of data via certificates and CAs is satisfactory, and your master(s) might require different maintenance from the workers - but you'll end up reading the docs to know how to roll updates step by step. In your use case I would stick with a smart use of docker-composes, perhaps just centralized in a private repo, with cron jobs on top. If you buy/rent a couple machines of any kind (from raspberry pis to cloud instances) to put on your network and run things for you, then a cluster becomes increasingly interesting as the amount of tasks needed/wanted and amount of computing available grows. My context: I have some limited experience with work (including some scary "abstractions" on top of K8s & Helm) and a recent CKA (certified kubernetes administrator hands-on certification) from LinuxFoundation.

rschachte 4y ago

If I was in your situation, probably not. We use it a lot at work, so it’s a playground to grow my skills and play around while doubling as a painless way to host anything. All in all, I still think docker, docker compose and nginx is the way to go for hobbyist stuff. I doubt my ISP would let me host anything at a huge scale off my home router anyways.

shepherdjerred 4y ago
nginx is great, but I've also been hearing good things about caddy[0]. I want to check it out soon. [0]: https://caddyserver.com/v2 https://caddyserver.com/v2

SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago

If you were to bring on two more servers it would probably be worth it. 3 is the magic number for when k3s starts to bring more interesting stuff to the table in terms of reliability and dynamic behaviors.

cmehdy 4y ago

All the maintenance you put towards getting things running right now will be maintenance you put towards making sure your cluster is doing what you need and want. If you start having more servers, a k8s cluster can do something like automatically transfer workloads when one machine has an issue for example, or dynamically allocating storage (even cloud) when needed, or allowing you to issue a single command to spin up more instance of whatever task you'd want to run more in parallel, or updating a version in a config file and letting the cluster do the job of stopping/updating/restarting things. But what you also have to do is ensure the underlying networking between machines works, all versions of the binaries on all the machines of the cluster are in close agreement with each others, encryption of data via certificates and CAs is satisfactory, and your master(s) might require different maintenance from the workers - but you'll end up reading the docs to know how to roll updates step by step. In your use case I would stick with a smart use of docker-composes, perhaps just centralized in a private repo, with cron jobs on top. If you buy/rent a couple machines of any kind (from raspberry pis to cloud instances) to put on your network and run things for you, then a cluster becomes increasingly interesting as the amount of tasks needed/wanted and amount of computing available grows. My context: I have some limited experience with work (including some scary "abstractions" on top of K8s & Helm) and a recent CKA (certified kubernetes administrator hands-on certification) from LinuxFoundation.