Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#1

Post by disintegore » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 3:37 PM UTC

In other words, who runs operations at a scale where distributed systems are absolutely necessary, without using any sort of container runtime or container orchestration tool?

If so, what does their technology stack look like? Are you aware of any good blog posts?

edit : While I do appreciate all the replies, I'd like to know if there are any organizations out there who operate at web scale without relying on the specific practice of shipping software with heaps of dependencies. Whether that be in a container or in a single-use VM. Thank you in advance and sorry for the confusion.

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#2

Post by Nextgrid » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

I've been at a company where they weren't (yet) using containers nor K8S.

The build process would just create VM images with the required binaries in there and then deploy that to an autoscaling group.

It worked well and if you only ever intend to run a single service per machine then is the right solution.

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#3

Post by efficax » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 3:58 PM UTC

Back in 2016 at least, Stack overflow was container free https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...

No idea how much has changed since then

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#4

Post by strikelaserclaw » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #2

I've been at a company where they weren't (yet) using containers nor K8S. The build process would just create VM images with the required binaries in there and then deploy that to an autoscaling group. It worked well and if you only ever intend to run a single service per machine then is the right solution.

this what my company does as well

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#5

Post by tiffanyh » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

I'd imagine the answer largely depends on whether or not your company either builds or buys software.

If your company builds - it's no garuntee containers are used (but it's a choice).

If your company buys software - I highly doubt containers are used at all.

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#6

Post by dolni » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #2

I've been at a company where they weren't (yet) using containers nor K8S. The build process would just create VM images with the required binaries in there and then deploy that to an autoscaling group. It worked well and if you only ever intend to run a single service per machine then is the right solution.

At my workplace we use Docker to run services, but there is no container orchestration like Kubernetes. An AMI bakes in some provisioning logic and the container image. Autoscaling does the rest.

Even without orchestration, I argue containers are useful. They abstract the operating system from the application and allow you to manage each independently. Much more easily than you'd be able to otherwise, anyway.

Plus you can run that image locally using something like docker-compose for an improved developer experience.

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#7

Post by css » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #2

I've been at a company where they weren't (yet) using containers nor K8S. The build process would just create VM images with the required binaries in there and then deploy that to an autoscaling group. It worked well and if you only ever intend to run a single service per machine then is the right solution.

Same here, the workflow is great.

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#8

Post by topspin » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

tiffanyh wrote: post #5

I'd imagine the answer largely depends on whether or not your company either builds or buys software. If your company builds - it's no garuntee containers are used (but it's a choice). If your company buys software - I highly doubt containers are used at all.

The commercial, licensed software I've dealt with in the past year has all been containerized.

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#9

Post by chewmieser » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

AWS-specific but prior to our migration to ECS containers we used their OpsWorks service. This worked reasonably well - we would setup clusters of servers with specific jobs and autoscaling groups would spin up servers to meet demand using Chef cookbooks to set them up.

We used a bash script to handle what we now use GitLab's CI system for. Deployments were handled through CodeDeploy and infrastructure would be replaced in a blue/green fashion.

Re: Ask HN: Who operates at scale without containers?

#10

Post by q3k » Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

Depends what you mean by 'container runtime' or 'container orchestration tool'...

For example, Google's Borg absolutely uses Linux namespacing for its workloads, and these workloads get scheduled automatically on arbitrary nodes, but this doesn't feel at all like Docker/OCI containers (ie., no whole-filesystem image, no private IP address to bind to, no UID 0, no control over passwd...). Instead, it feels much closer to just getting your binary/package installed and started on a traditional Linux server.