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Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#21
post #19
post #18

Why is this whole thread dead? Just because of the blatant appearance of astroturf or what?

I killed all the booster comments. We tell YC startups not to do that. All startups, of course, but especially YC startups. Sometimes it happens inadvertently (e.g. users find out about the thread and rush in to 'help'), but obviously we want the discussion here to be substantive.

Thanks, makes sense, appreciate the reply!

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#23
post #16

I can't believe how complex a tool has to be for several startups to get funding purely to try stop it doing bad things. Kudos to Datree for making the most of this, but feels like something's wrong with k8s for this to be such a thing.

IMO Kubernetes is of the level of complexity of a programming language or an OS. It's just at a larger scope, and we don't have a lot of things in that space, so we don't have well-defined concepts like "language" or "OS" to encompass them.

There are basically entire industries dedicated to stopping programming languages from doing bad things (static analysis vendors, auditing consultancies, formal verification tool vendors, etc.) and to stopping OSes from doing bad things (application-focused monitoring tools, security-focused intrusion detection tools, policy enforcement / device management vendors, etc.), and we don't really say "Wow, something is wrong with C++" or "Wow, something is wrong with Linux." We understand that they are high-power tools and you do want additional tools to focus that power.

(Well, to be fair, I say something is wrong with C++, but my preferred solution to that is even more complicated programming languages :) )

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#24

Is it me, or is the dashboard only for paying customers? What does this add compared to Polaris by fairwinds ?

The dashboard is also offered as part of our freemium offering :) we offer 1000 policy checks per month for free. Including the dashboard.

In terms of what we offer compared to Polaris: We offer pre-defined policies that comes out of the box along with the ability to write custom rules for your policy by your self.

Take us for a spin and let me know what you think! thank you

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#25
post #16

I can't believe how complex a tool has to be for several startups to get funding purely to try stop it doing bad things. Kudos to Datree for making the most of this, but feels like something's wrong with k8s for this to be such a thing.

The problem is right here in the blurb. It's not that k8s itself is complex. Ops is complex. Companies used to have entire dedicated IT departments full of sysadmins, storage engineers, network engineers, and security engineers with decades of experience configuring, deploying, maintaining, and monitoring servers, networks, hypervisors, and data centers.

Newer companies just push this onto their application developers, expecting them to figure this stuff out on top of being developers, "full-stack" now meaning you need to understand everything down to filesystems, overlay networks, container runtimes. This is not a reasonable expectation. Nobody can be an expert in everything.

Of course, I'm not sure full automation can really replace human expertise, either.

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#26
post #16

I can't believe how complex a tool has to be for several startups to get funding purely to try stop it doing bad things. Kudos to Datree for making the most of this, but feels like something's wrong with k8s for this to be such a thing.

I know! I think that the fact that developers are dealing more and more with infra is very empowering but on the other hand brings new challenges. It is no longer Dev VS OPS, but now Devs also need to learn infra best practices, so tools like ours help them :) thank you for your Kudos! <3

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#27
post #16

I can't believe how complex a tool has to be for several startups to get funding purely to try stop it doing bad things. Kudos to Datree for making the most of this, but feels like something's wrong with k8s for this to be such a thing.

The problem is right here in the blurb. It's not that k8s itself is complex. Ops is complex. Companies used to have entire dedicated IT departments full of sysadmins, storage engineers, network engineers, and security engineers with decades of experience configuring, deploying, maintaining, and monitoring servers, networks, hypervisors, and data centers. Newer companies just push this onto their application developer…

It's true that a developer can't be an expert in every aspect of the stack but that's where services like Datree or many of AWS' services for example come in, they bring the domain expertise and require the developer to only be familiar with the subject. The experts moved to be domain experts, working for the companies that develop the tools.

You don't really need a resident storage expert in every company, since most companies have similar needs.

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#28
post #16

I can't believe how complex a tool has to be for several startups to get funding purely to try stop it doing bad things. Kudos to Datree for making the most of this, but feels like something's wrong with k8s for this to be such a thing.

The problem is right here in the blurb. It's not that k8s itself is complex. Ops is complex. Companies used to have entire dedicated IT departments full of sysadmins, storage engineers, network engineers, and security engineers with decades of experience configuring, deploying, maintaining, and monitoring servers, networks, hypervisors, and data centers. Newer companies just push this onto their application developer…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#29
post #23
post #16

I can't believe how complex a tool has to be for several startups to get funding purely to try stop it doing bad things. Kudos to Datree for making the most of this, but feels like something's wrong with k8s for this to be such a thing.

IMO Kubernetes is of the level of complexity of a programming language or an OS. It's just at a larger scope, and we don't have a lot of things in that space, so we don't have well-defined concepts like "language" or "OS" to encompass them. There are basically entire industries dedicated to stopping programming languages from doing bad things (static analysis vendors, auditing consultancies, formal verification tool…

That may be true but programming languages are there to give you the power to develop any idea into a working software solution. I think K8s differs because I see it as something that simplifies infra and abstracts infra vendor specific concepts. The complexity in K8s doesn't add power, just confusion ;)

Re: Show HN: Datree (YC W20): Prevent K8s misconfigurations from reaching production

#30
post #23
post #16

I can't believe how complex a tool has to be for several startups to get funding purely to try stop it doing bad things. Kudos to Datree for making the most of this, but feels like something's wrong with k8s for this to be such a thing.

IMO Kubernetes is of the level of complexity of a programming language or an OS. It's just at a larger scope, and we don't have a lot of things in that space, so we don't have well-defined concepts like "language" or "OS" to encompass them. There are basically entire industries dedicated to stopping programming languages from doing bad things (static analysis vendors, auditing consultancies, formal verification tool…

Don't we? :). I say[0] something is wrong with programming itself, on a more fundamental level than the evolutionary history of C++.

I can't give a coherent and detailed analysis of it yet[1] - but I have this growing feeling that we're drowning in accidental complexity all across the board, at every abstraction layer. Like an inverse iceberg - where we see this whole, humongous mountain of tooling required to build and maintain software systems, but you can't shake the impression that we should be able to do the job with just the bit that's sticking above the waterline.

Speaking of k8s being "of the level of complexity of a programming language or an OS", I bet there's some formal way to show some isomorphism here - them being different incarnations of the same abstract structure. It's another kind of feeling I get when jumping up and down the software stack[2]. Maybe one day we'll figure it all out.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568053

[1] - But I am collecting observations and trying to mull the problem over in my subconscious mind.

[2] - Like e.g. code is data is code; your config parser is an interpreter of a programming language. Often enough, it grows to look like a typical PL, then gets replaced by one[3]. If your config happens to describe infrastructure, at some point you might realize you're writing "function calls" for business logic that are implemented in terms of spinning clusters up and down. Or e.g. the realization that DCOM is essentially microservices, so for some two decades or more, every Windows installation had something similar to k8s deep inside its bowels.

[3] - https://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2012/05/configuration-comple...

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