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You might not need Kubernetes

blog.jessfraz.com

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Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#111

Post by heipei »

wpietri wrote: post #87
combatentropy wrote: post #19

Some day I would like a powwow with all you hackers about whether 99% of apps need more than a $5 droplet from Digital Ocean, set up the old-fashioned way, LAMP --- though feel free to switch out the letters: BSD instead of Linux, Nginx instead of Apache, PostgreSQL instead of MySQL, Ruby or Python instead of PHP. I manage dozens of apps for thousands of users. The apps are all on one server, its load average around…

As somebody who has his own colocated server (and has since Bubble 1.0), I definitely agree that the old-fashioned way still works just fine. On the other hand, I've been building a home Kubernetes cluster to check out the new hotness. And although I don't think Kubernetes provides huge benefits to small-scale operators, I would still probably recommend that newbs look at some container orchestration approach instead…

This. Kubernetes (or whatever other container scheduler) might feel like overkill, but if all they do is force you to adopt a container-centric / 12-factor way of building your applications it was worth trying them. And once you've adopted that workflow it's a no-brainer to go from a single node to a cluster which will dynamically allocate the workloads it runs.

Running a small container cluster at work has even changed how I setup single-host projects in my spare time: I will build everything into a container, bind-mount whatever it might need, create a simple systemd unit that just runs / rms the docker container on start and stop. Bliss.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#113

Post by PavlovsCat »

bitwize wrote: post #65
mcguire wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. I've always found having an actual, functional product to be more impressive than a list of buzzwords on your resume. And most of the buzzword-driven development doesn't usually lead to a functioning system.

If you're buzzword compliant, you can fail forward. Your last product may not have worked out, but you've become an expert in Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, OpenShift, and Terraform which means that companies who are committed to the cloud (i.e., everybody) won't pass you over. Built an app that works before the cloud hype hit? Congratulations. You're a specialist in legacy technologies. We'll call you if we have a COBOL o…

> That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I would not pay such a price for it.

-- Henry David Thoreau, "Life Without Principle"

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#114

Post by gambler »

dcosson wrote: post #98
combatentropy wrote: post #19

Some day I would like a powwow with all you hackers about whether 99% of apps need more than a $5 droplet from Digital Ocean, set up the old-fashioned way, LAMP --- though feel free to switch out the letters: BSD instead of Linux, Nginx instead of Apache, PostgreSQL instead of MySQL, Ruby or Python instead of PHP. I manage dozens of apps for thousands of users. The apps are all on one server, its load average around…

I really think that running a LAMP server for the average beginning developer these days would be just as complicated, maybe more complicated, than running a single deployment on Google Kubernetes Engine. You have to know about package managers and init systems and apache/nginx config files and keep track of security updates for your stack and rotate the logs so the hard drive doesn't fill up. If you already know how…

>I really think that running a LAMP server for the average beginning developer these days would be just as complicated, maybe more complicated, than running a single deployment on Google Kubernetes Engine.

Back when I first started doing web dev I went from knowing nothing about server setups or Unix (i.e. running off managed hosting) to a reasonably secure FreeBSD server with a working content management system in 3 days. This included installing the OS. The same FAMP setup (with modifications and updates, obviously) continued to work perfectly fine for the next decade.

Re-edit: In the original version of the post I drew a parallel with several teams at my previous job "figuring out" AWS Lambda for several month, and stumbling over gotchas, multiple ways of doing everything and a myriad of conflicting tools. Since there is a reply to that statement, I guess I will add this note.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#115

Post by 3pt14159 »

wpietri wrote: post #87
combatentropy wrote: post #19

Some day I would like a powwow with all you hackers about whether 99% of apps need more than a $5 droplet from Digital Ocean, set up the old-fashioned way, LAMP --- though feel free to switch out the letters: BSD instead of Linux, Nginx instead of Apache, PostgreSQL instead of MySQL, Ruby or Python instead of PHP. I manage dozens of apps for thousands of users. The apps are all on one server, its load average around…

As somebody who has his own colocated server (and has since Bubble 1.0), I definitely agree that the old-fashioned way still works just fine. On the other hand, I've been building a home Kubernetes cluster to check out the new hotness. And although I don't think Kubernetes provides huge benefits to small-scale operators, I would still probably recommend that newbs look at some container orchestration approach instead…

I've found it just pushes the complexity elsewhere or opens up (or silences) performance or security problems you wouldn't have had if you'd stuck to the old fashion way of doing things.

Keep checklists and script what you can. I find it helpful to follow edge whenever I can so if I hit a snag the developers that made the change still have that change fresh in their mind. It really doesn't take that much time to keep things updated if you don't go hog-wild on different libraries and if your stuff is reasonably well tested.

As an aside, I've been thinking that there should be a stack that is designed and built for the sole purpose of staying stable over decades. Something with a bunch of stripped down technology. As robust and stable as possible. Only allow security updates. Only allow certain character sets. Something built on a language that is just stupid simple and secure. A Swift or Rust subset maybe? Lua? Lisp without the macro insanity?

If the future needs some sort of tech that we didn't anticipate (say, something to handle quantum computers breaking cryptography) then the stack should be setup in such a way to decouple the varying layers with minimal work.

I liken it to building codes. We should have pre-setup combinations of technologies that are stable, simple, and combinable. Sure, go outside them for skyscrapers, but for the day-to-day buildings things are getting too complicated.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#116

Post by krishicks »

chess44 wrote: post #33

I am interested in people's opinion on the "break even point" between using Kubernetes and not using Kubernetes. Let's pretend that the only options are Kubernetes and something substantially less powerful. What is the simplest/easiest personal project where using Kubernetes might be justified? I am a junior software engineer trying to figure out how to contextualize all of these container/container management system…

Like with anything, it should be evaluated based on what your needs are.

For a simple deploy you probably don't need Kubernetes or even containers.

If you are running containers, you'll need a mechanism for running them. And maybe at some point you want something to recreate them when they die or become unhealthy. Maybe you want to run multiple containers, and you want to do rolling deploys of them. Maybe you want to run them on multiple hosts and network them together. Maybe you want to be able to attach a persistent disk to some of them, or interface with some secrets management software. And maybe you want a single, well-supported API for doing all of the above.

There's a lot more that can be said about Kubernetes; it offers a lot out of the box as well as an API for extending it when you need behavior it doesn't provide.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#117

Post by mfer »

If you're going to use Kubernetes it's good to look at your business case or other need. Don't use a hammer if you need to unscrew something.

Kubernetes has it's place... I recently wrote a post on that... https://codeengineered.com/blog/2018/kubernetes-biz-case/

But, there are many times you just don't need it. Like, for my personal sites... just isn't a need there.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#118

Post by branko_d »

jimnotgym wrote: post #55
tshannon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does hacker news really run on one server? What if server goes down? I've always though high availability was the more important reason for multiple servers, rather than performance. Even if you have only two paying customers, they are probably paying for the right to hit your website / service 24/7.

An interesting case study of an app at scale is Stack Overflow. Rather more than one server, but rather less than you might expect. Edit: fixed url https://nickcraver.com/blog/2013/11/22/what-it-takes-to-run-...

Key point:

"The primary reason the utilization is so low is efficient code."

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#120

Post by gizmodo59 »

combatentropy wrote: post #19

Some day I would like a powwow with all you hackers about whether 99% of apps need more than a $5 droplet from Digital Ocean, set up the old-fashioned way, LAMP --- though feel free to switch out the letters: BSD instead of Linux, Nginx instead of Apache, PostgreSQL instead of MySQL, Ruby or Python instead of PHP. I manage dozens of apps for thousands of users. The apps are all on one server, its load average around…

I think of these in this way: 99% of the apps are developed by the developers who are not in the top 1%. The cheap access to computing power has led to a growth of developers beyond the highly skilled ones who can milk out everything available in a less powerful computer. I'd like to believe we are at an Electron development phase where we just want to ship as much as possible easily without worrying about hiring great talent (And yeah I hate that its inefficient in terms of memory usage). This has led to the explosion of so many frameworks that does a lot of things easily which requires such complex devops pipeline.
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