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These are great operational wins. Agreed very much that having autonomic (can fix itself) systems at your back is a massive game changer. De-crustifies the act

These are great operational wins. Agreed very much that having autonomic (can fix itself) systems at your back is a massive game changer. De-crustifies the act of running things. The other win is that there's a substantial cultural base to this way to go. Folks have been doing selfhosting for ages, but everyone has their own boutique setup some their way. A couple tools and techniques could be shared, but mostly everyone took blank slate configs & built their own system up, & added their own monitoring & operational scripts. https://github.com/onedr0p/home-ops https://github.com/onedr0p/home-ops is a set of helm scripts and other tools that is widely widely used, and there's a lot more like it. It's a huge build out, using convention and a common platform to enable portable knowledge & sharing. Self hosting did not have intellectual scale out at it's back, before Kubernetes came along. Docker and ansible and others have been around, but theres never been remotely the success there has been today in empowering users to setup & run complex services. We really have clawed out of the server-hugging jungle &started building some villages. It's wonderful to see.

zzyzxd 3y ago
IMHO they are the same wins. Because behind all these, the real value is standardization. Kubernetes offers standard APIs and all the vendors fall in line with their own implementations. As a result, the software I run in my homelab for free, is the same software battle-tested in various enterprise environments, from 5-person startups to planet-scale mega corps. There are paid engineers and companies out there making serious long term commitment to it. This is truly amazing.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  I really like your first post, because it highlights so many real fantastic wins, about how life is different & how the system really helps. And I felt like we have had so many promises from various bits of software & professional teams about how they will heal and help us. But it hasn't planned out. The Mesos of the world, the OpenStacks of the world: they all have made similar claims to what you are saying, but something is so different this time. It's working. It's adding up. Folks absolutely try to throw the "complexity" of it under the bus, but there's something incredibly simple about the pattern here of using apiserver to state your desires, and letting various controllers/operators work it all out, keep it going. It's a simple, repeatable pattern. And the consistency of it all allows for systems like Helm to emerge. Not even great, but ok, adequate and demonstrating how portable the consistent platform of Kubernetes really is; it just works. Something is different this time, even though so much sounds the same as previous dances around. It sounds complex, but many many people can get more onboard, the scope is more right sized to fit all the concerns, and the way that asking for things is just making a manifest is so much more accessible than before. What is different this time? Why is this working this time? Why are there such more vibrant communities?

zzyzxd 3y ago

IMHO they are the same wins. Because behind all these, the real value is standardization. Kubernetes offers standard APIs and all the vendors fall in line with their own implementations. As a result, the software I run in my homelab for free, is the same software battle-tested in various enterprise environments, from 5-person startups to planet-scale mega corps. There are paid engineers and companies out there making serious long term commitment to it. This is truly amazing.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I really like your first post, because it highlights so many real fantastic wins, about how life is different & how the system really helps. And I felt like we have had so many promises from various bits of software & professional teams about how they will heal and help us. But it hasn't planned out. The Mesos of the world, the OpenStacks of the world: they all have made similar claims to what you are saying, but something is so different this time. It's working. It's adding up. Folks absolutely try to throw the "complexity" of it under the bus, but there's something incredibly simple about the pattern here of using apiserver to state your desires, and letting various controllers/operators work it all out, keep it going. It's a simple, repeatable pattern. And the consistency of it all allows for systems like Helm to emerge. Not even great, but ok, adequate and demonstrating how portable the consistent platform of Kubernetes really is; it just works. Something is different this time, even though so much sounds the same as previous dances around. It sounds complex, but many many people can get more onboard, the scope is more right sized to fit all the concerns, and the way that asking for things is just making a manifest is so much more accessible than before. What is different this time? Why is this working this time? Why are there such more vibrant communities?