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People move to K8s (specifically from ECS) so that they can use cloud provider agnostic tooling and products. I suspect a lot of larger company K8s migrations a

People move to K8s (specifically from ECS) so that they can use cloud provider agnostic tooling and products. I suspect a lot of larger company K8s migrations are fueled by a desire to be multicloud or hybrid on-prem, mitigate cost, availability, and lock-in risk.

timbotron 2y ago
there's a pretty direct translation from ECS task definition to docker-compose file
zug_zug 2y ago
I've heard all of these lip-service justifications before, but I've yet to see anybody actually publish data showing how they saved any money. Would love to be proven wrong by some hard data, but something tells me I won't be.
- nailer 2y ago
  Likewise. I'm not sure Kubernetes famous complexity (and the resulting staff requirements) are worth it to preemptively avoid vendor lockin, and wouldn't be solved more efficiently by migrating to another cloud provider's native tools if the need arises.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  I'm confident Figma isn't paying published rates for AWS. The transition might have helped them in their rate negotiations with AWS, or it might not have. Hard data on the money saved would be difficult to attribute.
- jgalt212 2y ago
  True but if AWS knows your lock-in is less locked-in, I'd bet they'd more flexible when contracts are up for renewal. I mean it's possible the blog post's primary purpose was a shot across bow to their AWS account manager.
  - logifail 2y ago
    > it's possible the blog post's primary purpose was a shot across bow to their AWS account manager Isn't it slightly depressing that this explanation is fairly (the most?) plausible?
    - jiggawatts 2y ago
      Our state department of education is one of the biggest networks in the world with about half a million devices. They would occasionally publicly announce a migration to Linux. This was just a Microsoft licensing negotiation tactic. Before he was CEO, Ballmer flew here to negotiate one of the contracts. The discounts were epic.
- tengbretson 2y ago
  There are large swaths of the b2b space where (for whatever reason) being in the same cloud is a hard business requirement.
  - imtringued 2y ago
    There are good technical reasons for this. Anything latency or throughput sensitive is better done within the same datacenter. There have been submissions about an ffmpeg as a service company and a GPU over TCP company on HN recently that would significantly benefit from 'same cloud'.
- vundercind 2y ago
  The vast majority of corporate decisions are never justified by useful data analysis, before or after the fact. Many are so-analyzed, but usually in ways that anyone who paid attention in high school science or stats classes can tell are so flawed that they’re meaningless. We can’t even measure manager efficacy to any useful degree, in nearly all cases. We can come up with numbers, but they don’t mean anything. Good luck with anything more complex. Very small organizations can probably manage to isolate enough variables to know how good or bad some move was in hindsight, if they try and are competent at it (… if). Sometimes an effect is so huge for a large org that it overwhelms confounders and you can be pretty confident that it was at least good or bad, even if the degree is fuzzy. Usually, no. Big organizations are largely flying blind. This has only gotten worse with the shift from people-who-know-the-work-as-leadership to professional-managers-as-leadership.
- Alupis 2y ago
  Why would you assume it's lip-service? Being vendor-locked into ECS means you must pay whatever ECS wants... using k8s means you can feasibly pick up and move if you are forced. Even if it doesn't save money today it might save a tremendous amount in the future and/or provide a much stronger position to negotiate from.
  - greener_grass 2y ago
    Great in theory but in practice when you do K8s on AWS, the AWS stuff leaks through and you still have lock-in.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      Then don't use the AWS stuff. You can bring your own anything that they provide.
      - greener_grass 2y ago
        This requires iron discipline. Maybe with some kind of linter for Terraform / kubectl it could be done.
    - cwiggs 2y ago
      It doesn't have to be that way though. You can use the AWS ingress controller, or you can use ingress-nginx. You can use external secrets operator and tie it into AWS Secrets manager, or you can tie it into 1pass, or Hashicorp Vault. Just like picking EKS you have to be aware of the pros and cons of picking the cloud provider tool or not. Luckily the CNCF is doing a lot for reducing vender lock in and I think it will only continue.
  - elktown 2y ago
    I don't understand why this "you shouldn't be vendor-locked" rationalization is taken at face value at all? 1. The time it will take to move to another cloud is proportional to the complexity of your app. For example, if you're a Go shop using managed persistence are you more vendor locked in any meaningful way than k8s? What's the delta here? 2. Do you really think you can haggle with the fuel-producers like you're MAERKS? No, you're more likely just a car driving around for a gas station with increasingly diminishing returns.
- WaxProlix 2y ago
  It looks like I'm implying that companies are successful in getting those things from a K8s transition, but I wasn't trying to say that, just thinking of the times when I've seen these migrations happen and relaying the stated aims. I agree, I think it can be a burner of dev time and a burden on the business as devs acquire the new skillset instead of doing more valuable work.
OptionOfT 2y ago
Flexibility was a big thing for us. Many different jurisdictions required us to be conscious of where exactly data was stored & processed. K8s makes this really easy. Don't need to worry whether country X has a local Cloud data center of Vendor Y. Plus it makes hiring so much easier as you only need to understand the abstraction layer. We don't hire people for ARM64 or x86. We have abstraction layers. Multiple even. We'd be fooling us not to use them.
- dangsux 2y ago
  [dead]
fazkan 2y ago
This, most of it, I think is to support on-prem, and cloud-flexibility. Also from the customers point of view, they can now sell the entire figma "box" to controlled industries for a premium.
teyc 2y ago
People move to K8s so that their resumes and job ads are cloud provider agnostic. Peoples careers stagnate when their employers platform on a home baked tech, or on specific offerings from cloud providers. Employers find Mmoving to a common platform makes recruiting easier.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

timbotron 2y ago

there's a pretty direct translation from ECS task definition to docker-compose file

zug_zug 2y ago

I've heard all of these lip-service justifications before, but I've yet to see anybody actually publish data showing how they saved any money. Would love to be proven wrong by some hard data, but something tells me I won't be.

nailer 2y ago
Likewise. I'm not sure Kubernetes famous complexity (and the resulting staff requirements) are worth it to preemptively avoid vendor lockin, and wouldn't be solved more efficiently by migrating to another cloud provider's native tools if the need arises.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
I'm confident Figma isn't paying published rates for AWS. The transition might have helped them in their rate negotiations with AWS, or it might not have. Hard data on the money saved would be difficult to attribute.
jgalt212 2y ago
True but if AWS knows your lock-in is less locked-in, I'd bet they'd more flexible when contracts are up for renewal. I mean it's possible the blog post's primary purpose was a shot across bow to their AWS account manager.
- logifail 2y ago
  > it's possible the blog post's primary purpose was a shot across bow to their AWS account manager Isn't it slightly depressing that this explanation is fairly (the most?) plausible?
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    Our state department of education is one of the biggest networks in the world with about half a million devices. They would occasionally publicly announce a migration to Linux. This was just a Microsoft licensing negotiation tactic. Before he was CEO, Ballmer flew here to negotiate one of the contracts. The discounts were epic.
tengbretson 2y ago
There are large swaths of the b2b space where (for whatever reason) being in the same cloud is a hard business requirement.
- imtringued 2y ago
  There are good technical reasons for this. Anything latency or throughput sensitive is better done within the same datacenter. There have been submissions about an ffmpeg as a service company and a GPU over TCP company on HN recently that would significantly benefit from 'same cloud'.
vundercind 2y ago
The vast majority of corporate decisions are never justified by useful data analysis, before or after the fact. Many are so-analyzed, but usually in ways that anyone who paid attention in high school science or stats classes can tell are so flawed that they’re meaningless. We can’t even measure manager efficacy to any useful degree, in nearly all cases. We can come up with numbers, but they don’t mean anything. Good luck with anything more complex. Very small organizations can probably manage to isolate enough variables to know how good or bad some move was in hindsight, if they try and are competent at it (… if). Sometimes an effect is so huge for a large org that it overwhelms confounders and you can be pretty confident that it was at least good or bad, even if the degree is fuzzy. Usually, no. Big organizations are largely flying blind. This has only gotten worse with the shift from people-who-know-the-work-as-leadership to professional-managers-as-leadership.
Alupis 2y ago
Why would you assume it's lip-service? Being vendor-locked into ECS means you must pay whatever ECS wants... using k8s means you can feasibly pick up and move if you are forced. Even if it doesn't save money today it might save a tremendous amount in the future and/or provide a much stronger position to negotiate from.
- greener_grass 2y ago
  Great in theory but in practice when you do K8s on AWS, the AWS stuff leaks through and you still have lock-in.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    Then don't use the AWS stuff. You can bring your own anything that they provide.
    - greener_grass 2y ago
      This requires iron discipline. Maybe with some kind of linter for Terraform / kubectl it could be done.
  - cwiggs 2y ago
    It doesn't have to be that way though. You can use the AWS ingress controller, or you can use ingress-nginx. You can use external secrets operator and tie it into AWS Secrets manager, or you can tie it into 1pass, or Hashicorp Vault. Just like picking EKS you have to be aware of the pros and cons of picking the cloud provider tool or not. Luckily the CNCF is doing a lot for reducing vender lock in and I think it will only continue.
- elktown 2y ago
  I don't understand why this "you shouldn't be vendor-locked" rationalization is taken at face value at all? 1. The time it will take to move to another cloud is proportional to the complexity of your app. For example, if you're a Go shop using managed persistence are you more vendor locked in any meaningful way than k8s? What's the delta here? 2. Do you really think you can haggle with the fuel-producers like you're MAERKS? No, you're more likely just a car driving around for a gas station with increasingly diminishing returns.
WaxProlix 2y ago
It looks like I'm implying that companies are successful in getting those things from a K8s transition, but I wasn't trying to say that, just thinking of the times when I've seen these migrations happen and relaying the stated aims. I agree, I think it can be a burner of dev time and a burden on the business as devs acquire the new skillset instead of doing more valuable work.

OptionOfT 2y ago

Flexibility was a big thing for us. Many different jurisdictions required us to be conscious of where exactly data was stored & processed. K8s makes this really easy. Don't need to worry whether country X has a local Cloud data center of Vendor Y. Plus it makes hiring so much easier as you only need to understand the abstraction layer. We don't hire people for ARM64 or x86. We have abstraction layers. Multiple even. We'd be fooling us not to use them.

dangsux 2y ago
[dead]

fazkan 2y ago

This, most of it, I think is to support on-prem, and cloud-flexibility. Also from the customers point of view, they can now sell the entire figma "box" to controlled industries for a premium.

teyc 2y ago

People move to K8s so that their resumes and job ads are cloud provider agnostic. Peoples careers stagnate when their employers platform on a home baked tech, or on specific offerings from cloud providers. Employers find Mmoving to a common platform makes recruiting easier.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]