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You might not need Kubernetes

blog.jessfraz.com

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Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#161

Post by treis »

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 manage dozens of apps for thousands of users. The apps are all on one server,

How are these backed up?

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#162

Post by manigandham »

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…

It's not just about scaling. That seems to be the only thing people talk about because it sounds sexy but the reality is about operations.

Kubernetes makes deployments, rolling upgrades, monitoring, load balancing, logging, restarts, and other ops very easy. It can be as simple as a 1-line command to run a container or several YAML files to run complex applications and even databases. Once you become familiar with the options, you tend to think of running all software that way and it becomes really easy to deploy and test anything.

So yes, for personal projects a single server with SSH/Docker is fine, but any business can save time and IT overhead with Kubernetes. Considering how easy the clouds have made it to spin up a cluster, it's a great trade-off for most companies.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#163

Post by sleepybrett »

ownagefool wrote: post #134
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…

You probably don't need kubernetes. Lets be fair, it offers:- > Orchestration of block storage > Resource Management > Rolling Deploys > Cloud provider agnostic APIs* If you don't need any of these things, and your stack fits on a single server or two, and you aren't already familiar with it, I'm not sure why you bother other than an interest. That said, there's a world of companies that aren't FAANG, ub3r and Baseca…

There is also overhead in the form of instances to run and maintain the backend datastore and control plane components. You should already be at a certain scale before considering kubernetes.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#164

Post by kodablah »

treis wrote: post #161
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 manage dozens of apps for thousands of users. The apps are all on one server, How are these backed up?

And how do they fail over when the server dies (at least the non-user-app part like their DBs)?

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#165

Post by gambler »

pacala wrote: post #135
gambler wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Containers are a mechanism to run your old machine[s], but with a reproducible setup script. A machine packed in a container happens to also run on your dev/CI environments. There isn't much logical difference between a physical machine, a VM and a container [0]. Serverless offers a large surface of APIs, some of them proprietary, tangled in an ever evolving dependency hell. Historical note: Google Cloud started serv…

>Containers are a mechanism to run your old machine[s], but with a reproducible setup script.

Well, exactly. There is not much to them, conceptually. So why does orchestration has to be so complicated? https://www.influxdata.com/blog/will-kubernetes-collapse-und...

Also, serverless should be simpler. But it's not, like you said. That's my point. There is way too much accidental complexity bundled with these technologies.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#166

Post by loftyal »

atleta wrote: post #16

Yeah, you probably don't. And not only that, but it probably makes your life harder. I've interviewed for a tech lead position at a company working with freelancers and I'm pretty sure the reason they ended up rejecting me was that I mentioned the technical interviewer that I think containers, container infrastructures (like Kubernetes) and even cloud infrastructure is being overused/used without giving too much thou…

Same with me, never had any interviewer actually give me an actual real rebuttal, other than "but it scales!!".

I love software, but I really get tired of the blind cargo-cult culture of most of the industry.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#167

Post by noxToken »

maxxxxx wrote: post #121
brooksyd2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sentiment here, but I don't think it's strictly true. The way I look at new technology is that I need to know enough about it to either discount it, or choose to use it. So long as I know what I'm talking about when I tell a prospective employer that I advise not using technology X, then they typically understand that I have the knowledge to make that decision. So your advise should be, learn about the late…

" try it out," How much time do most of us to really "try out" something deeply enough to have an informed opinion?

Informed enough to talk (read bullshit) your way through an interview. Honestly though - think about all of things on your resume that you said you had experience with (when it more of a resume of hope and less of a CV of experience). Was it actual, working knowledge that was applicable to your professional career, or was it passing knowledge from that time you followed a few tutorials?

I don't ask that to denigrate you. I did it. Lots of my peers did it. It's part of this silly game we play for employment. We complain about needing to pad resumes to get our foot in the door, but when we get to make hiring decisions, we automatically bin resumes of students who only put knowledge of one language and a handful of basic tools.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#168

Post by kodablah »

vesak wrote: post #83
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.

Well, there's another important question: What percentage of all services need high availability? Stetson-Harrison method shows that it's less than 5%.

Need is determined by the customer. You might be able to explain to them that they don't need it on their way to a competitor. May not be fair or rational, but redundancy and its peace-of-mind has real benefits in most systems compared to cost.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#169

Post by Enginerd3 »

movedx wrote: post #157
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…

Spot on, friend. So recently I started writing a simple web application for my family. They send emails to each other with gift wish lists in them and we all have to juggle those emails around. I figured some products would exist already to solve this problem, but I wanted to make my own. When it came time to make it I thought: "This has to be a REST API with a JS front end" and then further down the line, "Man I sho…

"I figured some products would exist already to solve this problem, but I wanted to make my own."

But why? You could've used so many different products. You could've even used Google Docs.

Re: You might not need Kubernetes

#170

Post by yebyen »

vkou wrote: post #125
Already__Taken wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I built a k8s cluster in 3 days with zero experience after spending a week playing with minikube, reading the docs are kuberentes.io I'm pretty sure I can do it in an afternoon from scripts on github. But if something goes wrong all bets are off. Just getting something setup is not building a competence around it.

How well would you, with zero experience managing and deploying a stack, do the same in an orthodox LAMP setting?

Honestly, the answer is only relevant if you actually have zero experience deploying any stack, or orthodox LAMP stack.

If you have no experience with (stack Z), then you will have to go out and get some experience before opting to use (stack Z). The problem is, many people hear this and stop there.

While there are some barriers to experience and production-readiness, they are not insurmountable, and there may be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There is a cost for everything. Sometimes it's an opportunity cost. (Sometimes the cost can also come from not acting.)

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