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I think not bundling this into Kubernetes is mistake if you ever want to escape homelab. Cold starts for JIT languages are problematic for anything customer fa

I think not bundling this into Kubernetes is mistake if you ever want to escape homelab. Cold starts for JIT languages are problematic for anything customer facing so one must be kept running. So now I have two platforms and that always sucks as the SRE.

ajayvk 2y ago
Clace currently is single-node. It uses a SQLite database for app metadata (which is what allows it to support atomic updates across multiple apps). I will be adding multi-node support soon. The user will have to bring their own Postgres database and load balancer. Multiple Clace instances will run in parallel, each spinning up containers locally using Docker/Podman. For the internal tools use case, I think that should scale to support most workloads. There will be cases where delegating container management to Kubernetes might make sense. Container management in Clace is a thin layer, it should be possible to use a K8S service/deployment wrapper instead of using local Docker or Podman. The auto-idle feature might cause latency for services with a high startup cost. For most apps, it should be fine. It can be disabled individually for apps.
ajayvk 2y ago
Starting on K8s will make scaling down difficult. Starting without K8s for Clace makes it possible to control the developer experience better. Adding K8s and scaling up can be done later. At an abstract level, Kubernetes is used for managing compute (applications) and storage (databases/queues/file stores/volumes), stateless services and stateful data stores. Compute by itself is easy to scale. Managing storage and stateful data stores are where some of the complexity of K8s comes from. For many workloads, it makes sense to use a managed database (RDS/managed Redis/S3 etc). Data backups, performance etc are easier to handle with a managed service, at the cost of how much you pay. If the stateful data stores are externally managed, using K8s for compute might be overkill, especially when you consider the extras (like ArgoCD, Service Mesh, IDP etc) which need to added to make it a useful developer experience. Clace aims to provide a scalable solution for compute only scenarios, providing a great developer experience while targeting internal tools as the primary initial use case.

ajayvk 2y ago

Clace currently is single-node. It uses a SQLite database for app metadata (which is what allows it to support atomic updates across multiple apps). I will be adding multi-node support soon. The user will have to bring their own Postgres database and load balancer. Multiple Clace instances will run in parallel, each spinning up containers locally using Docker/Podman. For the internal tools use case, I think that should scale to support most workloads. There will be cases where delegating container management to Kubernetes might make sense. Container management in Clace is a thin layer, it should be possible to use a K8S service/deployment wrapper instead of using local Docker or Podman. The auto-idle feature might cause latency for services with a high startup cost. For most apps, it should be fine. It can be disabled individually for apps.

ajayvk 2y ago

Starting on K8s will make scaling down difficult. Starting without K8s for Clace makes it possible to control the developer experience better. Adding K8s and scaling up can be done later. At an abstract level, Kubernetes is used for managing compute (applications) and storage (databases/queues/file stores/volumes), stateless services and stateful data stores. Compute by itself is easy to scale. Managing storage and stateful data stores are where some of the complexity of K8s comes from. For many workloads, it makes sense to use a managed database (RDS/managed Redis/S3 etc). Data backups, performance etc are easier to handle with a managed service, at the cost of how much you pay. If the stateful data stores are externally managed, using K8s for compute might be overkill, especially when you consider the extras (like ArgoCD, Service Mesh, IDP etc) which need to added to make it a useful developer experience. Clace aims to provide a scalable solution for compute only scenarios, providing a great developer experience while targeting internal tools as the primary initial use case.