K8s and its derivatives ultimately were designed to declaratively orchestrate stateless apis/middlewares. It of course can quite competently do many other thing

K8s and its derivatives ultimately were designed to declaratively orchestrate stateless apis/middlewares. It of course can quite competently do many other things. But it does what it was BUILT to do originally the best and the simplest. Many hobby projects are just that, simple apis and can benefit from the simple declarative yamls that exist in say a sqlite db on the vm vs random config in /etc, /var and ip table scripts etc. But trying to do anything out of that simple mold? just do it the simpler and easier traditional way.