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Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

cloudcritical.org

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Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#21

Post by jasonrichardsmi »

charcircuit wrote: post #19
jasonrichardsmi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi danpalmer, I kind of hit on this in the article. How do you think abstracting away the server adds any value in "public cloud"? Where you can get bespoke VMs, with no concern for the underlying hardware? Can you elaborate?

I think part of the confusion is that server can refer to both a physical box and a VM. Abstracting away servers is about not having to think about VMs. You have a service which requires some amount of compute, memory, and storage and you just want that service to run. There is value to not having to worry about provisioning a VM or administering it.

But you still have to do that in Kubernetes, unless you are running Fargate. Someone has to provision and maintain that machine, and in the process introduce a ton of administrative overhead.

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#22

Post by dimitar »

I agree with the take, but I don't think it's a bad thing. Sometimes you want to abstract away the cloud provider and you are willing to pay the price for that abstraction. Sometimes it's easier/simpler to duplicate a bit more know-how and code.

In terms of consumers Kubernetes may have saved the cloud from becoming an AWS monopoly the way the PC got coupled to Microsoft Windows and Office.

Previously every Cloud provider no matter how small had their copy of EC2,IAM,VPC,S3,ELB and such, but struggled copying the dosens of other commonly used services. It is kind of like the saying that everyone uses 20% of Excels features, but for each user is a different 20%, and you want to keep your options open. Or you are fine with running Linux, but you need this one app that doesn't work on it.

Now all the minor clouds need to catch up is to add Managed Kubernetes and they are competitive with AWS. And vendors like VMWare can also hop on the bandwagon without having to deal with AWS.

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#23

Post by parkingrift »

jasonrichardsmi wrote: post #18
danpalmer wrote: post #15

I'm not sure this was authored in full good faith. Things like dismissing Kubernetes attempts to "abstract away the servers" as being pointless because we already had virtualisation is at best ignorance of the differences, and at worst, gaslighting. It's clear that the author doesn't like Kubernetes, and to be honest this documentary is unlikely to change their mind because they are not the target audience. All the "…

Hi danpalmer, I kind of hit on this in the article. How do you think abstracting away the server adds any value in "public cloud"? Where you can get bespoke VMs, with no concern for the underlying hardware? Can you elaborate?

You don’t really have no concern for the underlying hardware. You pick and choose the CPU/GPU horsepower, memory, storage type and storage class, network transfer speed, and many other things.

It’s at the point of needing to scale horizontally where I begin to disagree with your premise. This is where you’ll typically get into proprietary and/or ugly offerings.

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#24

Post by gizzlon »

charcircuit wrote: post #19
jasonrichardsmi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi danpalmer, I kind of hit on this in the article. How do you think abstracting away the server adds any value in "public cloud"? Where you can get bespoke VMs, with no concern for the underlying hardware? Can you elaborate?

I think part of the confusion is that server can refer to both a physical box and a VM. Abstracting away servers is about not having to think about VMs. You have a service which requires some amount of compute, memory, and storage and you just want that service to run. There is value to not having to worry about provisioning a VM or administering it.

That's a PAAS and they existed long before k8

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#25

Post by [deleted] »

jasonrichardsmi wrote: post #21
charcircuit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the confusion is that server can refer to both a physical box and a VM. Abstracting away servers is about not having to think about VMs. You have a service which requires some amount of compute, memory, and storage and you just want that service to run. There is value to not having to worry about provisioning a VM or administering it.

But you still have to do that in Kubernetes, unless you are running Fargate. Someone has to provision and maintain that machine, and in the process introduce a ton of administrative overhead.

[deleted]

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#26

Post by [deleted] »

jasonrichardsmi wrote: post #21
charcircuit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the confusion is that server can refer to both a physical box and a VM. Abstracting away servers is about not having to think about VMs. You have a service which requires some amount of compute, memory, and storage and you just want that service to run. There is value to not having to worry about provisioning a VM or administering it.

But you still have to do that in Kubernetes, unless you are running Fargate. Someone has to provision and maintain that machine, and in the process introduce a ton of administrative overhead.

[deleted]

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#27

Post by zozbot234 »

jasonrichardsmi wrote: post #18
danpalmer wrote: post #15

I'm not sure this was authored in full good faith. Things like dismissing Kubernetes attempts to "abstract away the servers" as being pointless because we already had virtualisation is at best ignorance of the differences, and at worst, gaslighting. It's clear that the author doesn't like Kubernetes, and to be honest this documentary is unlikely to change their mind because they are not the target audience. All the "…

Hi danpalmer, I kind of hit on this in the article. How do you think abstracting away the server adds any value in "public cloud"? Where you can get bespoke VMs, with no concern for the underlying hardware? Can you elaborate?

The principled way of "abstracting away the server" is in fact namespacing of all OS-managed resources ala containers. This opens up possibilities like automated process checkpointing and migration, or even seamless vertical scaling to a multi-node cluster (as opposed to a single server node) via a SSI (single system image) environment.

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#28

Post by dijit »

parkingrift wrote: post #23
jasonrichardsmi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi danpalmer, I kind of hit on this in the article. How do you think abstracting away the server adds any value in "public cloud"? Where you can get bespoke VMs, with no concern for the underlying hardware? Can you elaborate?

You don’t really have no concern for the underlying hardware. You pick and choose the CPU/GPU horsepower, memory, storage type and storage class, network transfer speed, and many other things. It’s at the point of needing to scale horizontally where I begin to disagree with your premise. This is where you’ll typically get into proprietary and/or ugly offerings.

>You pick and choose the CPU/GPU horsepower, memory, storage type and storage class,

You still do with kubernetes

> network transfer speed, and many other things.

No, you don't. There's no slider for "network performance" on GCP, Azure or AWS.

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#29

Post by danpalmer »

mahathu wrote: post #20
danpalmer wrote: post #15

I'm not sure this was authored in full good faith. Things like dismissing Kubernetes attempts to "abstract away the servers" as being pointless because we already had virtualisation is at best ignorance of the differences, and at worst, gaslighting. It's clear that the author doesn't like Kubernetes, and to be honest this documentary is unlikely to change their mind because they are not the target audience. All the "…

What does gaslighting mean in this context? I thought it meant making the "victim" question their own sanity/perception of reality?

In this case it's essentially claiming that Kubernetes is the same as virtualisation or has no other benefits. It's (arguably) gaslighting because it doesn't make clear that it is making that claim, it instead implies it as fact in the way it talks about virtualisation.

Re: Kubernetes Documentary: A Critical Review

#30

Post by wkrause »

mahathu wrote: post #20
danpalmer wrote: post #15

I'm not sure this was authored in full good faith. Things like dismissing Kubernetes attempts to "abstract away the servers" as being pointless because we already had virtualisation is at best ignorance of the differences, and at worst, gaslighting. It's clear that the author doesn't like Kubernetes, and to be honest this documentary is unlikely to change their mind because they are not the target audience. All the "…

What does gaslighting mean in this context? I thought it meant making the "victim" question their own sanity/perception of reality?

Outside of gaslighting's original context in a relationship, I often see it used to refer to a form of strawman argument. I read the gaslighting comment as saying that the person knows that virtualization in the form before Kubernetes was not sufficient, but tries to make people who express that thought feel like they're wrong at a fundamental level. So the implication is that the author knowingly constructs a strawman argument and then tries to make it sound like anyone who recognizes it for what it is, is "crazy".
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