You might not need Kubernetes

I have one code base that I run on multiple servers/containers independently of each other. Think Wordpress style. I used to run it on Heroku but I switched to Dokku because it's substantially cheaper and I don't mind taking care of the infrastructure. I like Dokku but I do worry about being tied to just one server and not being able to horizontally scale or easily load balance between multiple servers/regions. Ideally what I'd like is Dokku with horizontal scaling built in. I've seen Deis and Flynn but they seem less active/mature even than Dokku, which is saying something.

Is Kubernetes the right answer here or should I stick with Dokku and forget about horizontal scaling?

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#7

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:12 PM UTC

jmkni wrote: post #5

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't. EDIT: 99 times out of 100, you don't.

But, maybe?

Maybe you'll become a billionaire. But probably not. Your monolith in a container will take you far, before we go down the treacherous path of microservices (for team demarcation, not technical scaling, but maybe technical scaling!), container lifecycle management, inbound load balancing, internal load balancing, service mesh and discovery, and all the fun that container orchestration at scale encompasses (are you ready to cry for a bit when you're running on no sleep and you can't determine why your orchestrator is unable to retrieve container images from your registry?).

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#8

Post by beagledude » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

beagledude wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or Do you?

You don't. EDIT: 99 times out of 100, you don't.

but what if? Imagine.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#9

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

beagledude wrote: post #8

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't. EDIT: 99 times out of 100, you don't.

but what if? Imagine.

I imagine if you have an ops team, they're going to continue to pray every time you have to upgrade k8s or a supporting underlying service and the expectation is that everything will continue to function without dropping an inbound request. I imagine they are going to be less than impressed being on call for something that is essentially still in beta. And if you have no ops and your devs are responsible for it, god help you unless you're leaning heavily on a Kubernetes managed service (which is of course, as we recently saw with Google's outage [1], no guarantee everything will work flawlessly).

My hesitation and cautiousness doesn't come from being a greybeard curmudgeon, it comes from a healthy dose of skepticism that this is The One True Path that will Solve All The Problems. I am cautiously optimistic it might be a stable, proven ecosystem, eventually. But it isn't today.

When making technology decisions, imagine that you're the one with the pager at 3am and work backwards accordingly.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18428497

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#10

Post by coreyja » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #6

Maybe someone here can help me figure out what I need, since the world of containers is growing faster than I can understand. I have one code base that I run on multiple servers/containers independently of each other. Think Wordpress style. I used to run it on Heroku but I switched to Dokku because it's substantially cheaper and I don't mind taking care of the infrastructure. I like Dokku but I do worry about being t…

I am in the exact same boat as you are, and would love some feedback as well! I have been considering Kubernetes so that I can allow horizontal scaling, but haven't done it yet.

For my use case I am VERY well aware that Kubernetes is overkill, but I don't see a great middle ground between Dokku where I am now, and Kubernetes.