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Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

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Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#171

Post by dominotw »

hliyan wrote: post #79

This whole image, to me, represents a big problem with software engineering today: https://twitter.com/dankohn1/status/989956137603747840 The industry is full of engineers who are experts in weirdly named "technologies" (which are really just products and libraries) but have no idea how the actual technologies (e.g. TCP/IP, file systems, memory hierarchy etc.) work. I don't know what to think when I meet engineers wh…

I don't know man ppl work to make money and feed and their family( mostly). 'Expert in sockets' is not something on the resume that would get them a job.

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#173

Post by dankohn1 »

hliyan wrote: post #79

This whole image, to me, represents a big problem with software engineering today: https://twitter.com/dankohn1/status/989956137603747840 The industry is full of engineers who are experts in weirdly named "technologies" (which are really just products and libraries) but have no idea how the actual technologies (e.g. TCP/IP, file systems, memory hierarchy etc.) work. I don't know what to think when I meet engineers wh…

You referenced my tweet of the latest Cloud Native Landscape, which is the backside of our handouts.

Please don't miss the Cloud Native Trail Map, which is the front side: https://twitter.com/dankohn1/status/999727252135972864

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#174

Post by mwcampbell »

vidarh wrote: post #168
manigandham wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're talking about the actual installation of a distributed system, then installing a distributed database isn't "easy" either, and also requires knowing the concepts so you know what you're doing. Kubernetes is not going to be simpler or easier than the software that it's designed to run on top of itself, but it's not that hard anymore either. The installers work well, there are several distros with varying capa…

I think this is a totally flawed way of thinking. Most systems do not need a fully distributed database, for example, and as a result most don't need the flexibility. E.g. over years of using Etcd. I've come to the conclusion that none of the uses I've actually used it for were necessary, and so I've generally stopped using it. I'll use it again if I come across instances where consistency is sufficiently critical an…

So what do you use instead of Kubernetes? Docker Swarm? Manually allocating containers on specific machines? Something else?

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#175

Post by sidlls »

merb wrote: post #113
geerlingguy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, only if you're working on like 100+ of them. If you just maintain a website using a traditional LAMP/LEMP stack, Rails, Node.js, or something like that it still makes more sense (unless you want to be 'trendy') to stick to primitives or use more managed hosting. But if you're maintaining a fleet of independent sites, Kubernetes' scheduling can make sense, despite the inherent complexity (TBH, you're going to hav…

K8s also makes sense if you have more than a single server. it's not as easy to keep all your servers up to date, without some automation.

You don't need K8s to automate maintenance of a small number of servers.

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#176

Post by mverwijs »

"The number of things you need to create and worry about are a barrier to starting a project and iterating on it quickly."

As an SRE / Ops person it is my take that Kubernetes addresses many of the complexity your startup should be worrying about, but doesn't because "it is not a feature".

Yes, it is massively complex. That is because Ops is massively complex.

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#177

Post by falcolas »

hliyan wrote: post #79

This whole image, to me, represents a big problem with software engineering today: https://twitter.com/dankohn1/status/989956137603747840 The industry is full of engineers who are experts in weirdly named "technologies" (which are really just products and libraries) but have no idea how the actual technologies (e.g. TCP/IP, file systems, memory hierarchy etc.) work. I don't know what to think when I meet engineers wh…

I'm late to this party, but I agree. We hired someone who was explicitly a "Kubernetes" expert, because we were investigating Kubernetes.

What we discovered is that this meant they understood kubectl pretty well, and could write the yaml files. He didn't understand anything under the hood, so we had to re-discover everything.

And, ultimately, if you want to get a feel for how complex k8s really is, try and use their documentation beyond the very basics. It's contradictory, incomplete, and behind by a version of two sometimes. It was fun building a set of automated interactions with kubectl and its cousins from the web documentation, only to find it doesn't work because the actual binaries expect different arguments.

Or the API libraries if you're feeling particularly brave: a set of these horribly complex, dynamically generated files. Oh, some of them will be alpha, others beta, others beta2, etc. The version depends on the function you're using. Have fun!

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#178

Post by eternalban »

hliyan wrote: post #79

This whole image, to me, represents a big problem with software engineering today: https://twitter.com/dankohn1/status/989956137603747840 The industry is full of engineers who are experts in weirdly named "technologies" (which are really just products and libraries) but have no idea how the actual technologies (e.g. TCP/IP, file systems, memory hierarchy etc.) work. I don't know what to think when I meet engineers wh…

Did you catch some of the comments yesterday (in the thread about Intel and age discrimination) poo-pooing the relevance of experience in software engineering? There is your answer, right there.

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#179

Post by hedora »

mwcampbell wrote: post #174
vidarh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a totally flawed way of thinking. Most systems do not need a fully distributed database, for example, and as a result most don't need the flexibility. E.g. over years of using Etcd. I've come to the conclusion that none of the uses I've actually used it for were necessary, and so I've generally stopped using it. I'll use it again if I come across instances where consistency is sufficiently critical an…

So what do you use instead of Kubernetes? Docker Swarm? Manually allocating containers on specific machines? Something else?

Here is a thought experiment getting to the other person’s post:

You have 1000 machines. Each runs 1000 containers with an average runtime of 1 hour per container.

Design a scheduler that runs on a single machine with a cold spare. For failover, assume you have access to a reliable RDBMS or relible NFS server.

Re: Will Kubernetes Collapse Under the Weight of Its Complexity?

#180

Post by [deleted] »

mverwijs wrote: post #176

"The number of things you need to create and worry about are a barrier to starting a project and iterating on it quickly." As an SRE / Ops person it is my take that Kubernetes addresses many of the complexity your startup should be worrying about, but doesn't because "it is not a feature". Yes, it is massively complex. That is because Ops is massively complex.

[deleted]
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