I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either • Hacker News Board

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#101

Post by harrall » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:48 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #3

Interesting that the mania for over-investment in devops is beginning to abate. Here on Hacker News I was a steady critic of both Docker and Kubernetes, going to at least 2017, but most of these posts were unpopular. I have to go back to 2019 to find one that sparked a conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20371961 The stuff I posted about Kubernetes did not draw a conversation, but I was simply document…

People gravely miss-understand containerization and Docker.

All it lets you do is put shell commands into a text file and be able to run it self-contained anywhere. What is there to hate?

You still use the same local filesystem, the same host networking, still rsync your data dir, still use the same external MySQL server even if you want -- nothing has changed.

You do NOT need a load balancer, a control plane, networked storage, Kubernetes or any of that. You ADD ON those things when you want them like you add on optional heated seats to your car.

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#102

Post by tapoxi » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:50 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #90

I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate “cloud shit”, and a small part of me is convinced that literally no one actually likes it, and everyone is playing a joke on me. I have set up about a dozen rack mount servers in my life, installing basically every flavor of Unix and Linux and message busses under the sun in the process, but I still get confused by all the Kubectl commands and GCP integration with it. I might j…

This read as "old man yells at cloud" to me.

I've managed a few thousand VMs in the past, and I'm extremely grateful for it. An image is built in CI, service declares what it needs, the scheduler just handles shit. I'm paged significantly less and things are predictable and consistent unlike the world of VMs where even your best attempt at configuration management would result in drift, because the CM system is only enforcing a subset of everything that could go wrong.

But yes, Kubernetes is configured in YAML, and YAML kind of sucks, but you rarely do that. The thing that changes is your code, and once you've got the boilerplate down CI does the rest.

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#103

Post by fud101 » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:51 AM UTC

OtomotO wrote: post #7

lkrubner wrote: post #3

Interesting that the mania for over-investment in devops is beginning to abate. Here on Hacker News I was a steady critic of both Docker and Kubernetes, going to at least 2017, but most of these posts were unpopular. I have to go back to 2019 to find one that sparked a conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20371961 The stuff I posted about Kubernetes did not draw a conversation, but I was simply document…

It's just the hype moving on. Every generation has to make similar mistakes again and again. I am sure if we had the opportunity and the hype was there we would've used k8s in 2005 as well. The same thing is true for e.g. JavaScript on the frontend. I am currently migrating a project from React to HTMX. Suddenly there is no build step anymore. Some people were like: "That's possible?" Yes, yes it is and it turns out…

where does tailwind stand on this? you can use it without a build step but it's strongly recommended in production

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#104

Post by shlomo_z » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:53 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #17

Except that all of this subjects you and all of your workloads to warrantless US government surveillance due to running in the big public clouds. I personally don’t want the federal government being able to peek into my files and data at any time, even though I’ve done nothing wrong. It’s the innocent people who have most to lose from government intrusion. It seems insane to me to just throw up one’s hands and store…

I've never heard of this. Can you share a link of what you are referring to? I care about this.

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#105

Post by rozap » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:53 AM UTC

valenterry wrote: post #12

lkrubner wrote: post #3

Interesting that the mania for over-investment in devops is beginning to abate. Here on Hacker News I was a steady critic of both Docker and Kubernetes, going to at least 2017, but most of these posts were unpopular. I have to go back to 2019 to find one that sparked a conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20371961 The stuff I posted about Kubernetes did not draw a conversation, but I was simply document…

So, let's say you want to deploy server instances. Let's keep it simple and say you want to have 2 instances running. You want to have zero-downtime-deployment. And you want to have these 2 instances be able to access configuration (that contains secrets). You want load balancing, with the option to integrate an external load balancer. And, last, you want to be able to run this setup both locally and also on at least…

A script that installs some dependencies on an Ubuntu vm. A script that rsyncs the build artifact to the machine. The script can drain connections and restart the service using the new build, then onto the next VM. The cloud load balancer points at those VMs and has a health check. It's very simple. Nothing fancy.

Our small company uses this setup. We migrated from GCP to AWS when our free GCP credits from YC ran out and then we used our free AWS credits. That migration took me about a day of rejiggering scripts and another of stumbling around in the horrible AWS UI and API. Still seems far, far easier than paying the kubernetes tax.

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#106

Post by lmm » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:55 AM UTC

So how does this person link up the different parts that go into deploying a service? Like, yes, you can have a managed database, and you can have a managed application deployment (via cloud run), and you can have a pub-sub messaging queue, and you can have a domain name. But where's the part where you tie these all together and say that service A is these and service B is those? Just manually?

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#107

Post by voidfunc » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:55 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #90

I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate “cloud shit”, and a small part of me is convinced that literally no one actually likes it, and everyone is playing a joke on me. I have set up about a dozen rack mount servers in my life, installing basically every flavor of Unix and Linux and message busses under the sun in the process, but I still get confused by all the Kubectl commands and GCP integration with it. I might j…

I'm always kind of blown away by experiences like this. Admittedly, I've been using Kubernetes since the early days and I manage an Infra team that operates a couple thousand self-managed Kubernetes clusters so... expert blindness at work. Before that I did everything from golden images to pushing changes via rsync and kicking a script to deploy.

Maybe it's because I adopted early and have grown with the technology it all just makes sense? It's not that complicated if you limit yourself to the core stuff. Maybe I need to write a book like "Kubernetes for Greybeards" or something like that.

What does fucking kill me in the Kubernetes ecosystem is the amount of add-on crap that is pitched as "necessary". Sidecars... so many sidecars. Please stop. There's way too much vendor garbage surrounding the ecosystem and dev's rarely stop to think about whether they should deploy something when it's easy as dropping in some YAML and letting the cluster magically run it.

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#108

Post by t-writescode » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:56 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #19

semitones wrote: post #15

Kubernetes has a steep learning curve, and certainly a lot of complexity, but when used appropriately for the right case, by god it's glorious

Kubernetes has a proportional learning curve. If you're used to managing platforms e.g. networking, load balancers, security etc. then it's intuitive and easy. If you're used to everything being managed for you then it will feel steep.

I think this is only true if the original k8s cluster you're operating against was written by an expert and laid out as such.

If you're entering into k8s land with someone else's very complicated mess across hundreds of files, you're going to be in for a bad time.

A big problem, I feel, is that if you don't have an expert design the k8s system from the start, it's just going to be a horrible time; and, many people, when they're asked to set up a k8s setup for their startup or whatever, aren't already experts, so the thing that's produced is not maintainable.

And then everyone is cursed.

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#109

Post by cheriot » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 5:58 AM UTC

tombert wrote: post #90

I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate “cloud shit”, and a small part of me is convinced that literally no one actually likes it, and everyone is playing a joke on me. I have set up about a dozen rack mount servers in my life, installing basically every flavor of Unix and Linux and message busses under the sun in the process, but I still get confused by all the Kubectl commands and GCP integration with it. I might j…

> I might just be stupid, but it feels like all I ever do with ____ is update and break ____ files, and then spend a day fixing them by copy-pasting increasingly-convoluted things on stackexchange. I cannot imagine how anyone goes to work and actually enjoys working in ____, though I guess someone must in terms of “law of large numbers”.

I'd make a similar statement about the sys admin stuff you already know well. Give me yaml and a rest api any day.

I see where you and the article are coming from, though. The article reasonably points out that k8s is heavy for simpler workloads.

Re: I Didn't Need Kubernetes, and You Probably Don't Either

#110

Post by hi_hi » Wed, Nov 27, 2024, 6:01 AM UTC

I'm running kubernetes (actually k3s with helm, but that counts, right) on a ludicrously old and underpowered Ubuntu thinclient thats about 10 years old

- https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hp/t620/

I didn't _need_ to, and it was a learning curve to setup that had me crying into my whisky some nights, but its been rock solidly running my various media server and development services for the past few years with no issues.

Sure, its basically a fancy wrapper around a bunch of docker containers, and I use hardly any of the features which k8s brings to the party, but your cold hard logic won't win over the warm and fuzzy feelings I get knowing I did something stupid and it works!