Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

benhouston3d.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 436 posts

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

#51

Post by kccqzy »

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…

I've worked at tiny startups before. Tiny startups don't need zero-downtime-deployment. They don't have enough traffic to need load balancing. Especially when you are running locally, you don't need any of these.

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

#53

Post by valenterry »

caseyohara wrote: post #28
valenterry wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you are proving the point; there are very, very few applications that need to run on two cloud providers. If you do, sure, use Kubernetes if that makes your job easier. For the other 99% of applications, it’s overkill. Apart from that requirement, all of this is very doable with EC2 instances behind an ALB, each running nginx as a reverse proxy to an application server with hot restarting (e.g. Puma) launched…

Sorry, that was a misunderstanding. I meant that I want to be able to run it on two cloud providers, but one at a time is fine. It just means that it would be easy to migrate/switch over if necessary.

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

#54

Post by ndriscoll »

honkycat wrote: post #24
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…

Start-ups that don't need to scale will quickly go away, because how else are you going to make a profit? How have you been going since 2005 and still not understand the economics of software?

CPUs are ~300x more powerful and storage offers ~10,000x more IOPS than 2005 hardware. More efficient server code exists today. You can scale very far on one server. If you were bootstrapping a startup, you could probably plan to use a pair of gaming PCs until at least the first 1-10M users.

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

#55

Post by valenterry »

tootubular wrote: post #34
valenterry wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My personal goto-solution for those requirements -- well 1 cloud provider, I'll follow up on that in a second -- would be using ECS or an equivalent service. I see the OP was a critic of Docker as well, but for me, ECS hits a sweet spot. I know the compute is at a premium, but at least in my use-cases, it's so far been a sensible trade. About the 2 cloud providers bit. Is that a common thing? I get wanting migrate aw…

Actually, I totally agree. ECS (in combination with secret manager) is basically fulfilling all needs, except being not so easy to reproduce/simulate locally and of course with the vendor lock-in.

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

#56

Post by valenterry »

whatever1 wrote: post #30
valenterry wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why does a startup need zero-downtime-deployment? Who cares if your site is down for 5 seconds? (This is how long it takes to restart my Django instance after updates).

Because it increases development speed. It's maybe okay to be down for 5 seconds. But if I screw up, I might be down until I fix it. With zero-downtime deployment, if I screw up, then the old instances are still running and I can take my time to fix it.

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

#57

Post by jauntywundrkind »

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

And there's very few investment points below it.

You can cobble together your own unique special combination of services to run apps on! It's an open ended adventure into itself!

I'm all for folks doing less, if it makes sense! But there's basically nothing except slapping together the bits yourself & convincing yourself your unique home-made system is fine. You'll be going it alone, & figuring out on the fly, all to save yourself from getting good at the one effort that has a broad community, practitioners, and massive extensibility via CRD & operators.

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

#59

Post by anon7000 »

kccqzy wrote: post #51
valenterry wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've worked at tiny startups before. Tiny startups don't need zero-downtime-deployment. They don't have enough traffic to need load balancing. Especially when you are running locally, you don't need any of these.

Tiny startups can’t afford to loose customers because they can’t scale though, right? Who is going to invest in a company that isn’t building for scale?

Tiny startups are rarely trying to build projects for small customer bases (eg little scaling required.) They’re trying to be the next unicorn. So they should probably make sure they can easily scale away from tossing everything on the same server

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

#60

Post by osigurdson »

honkycat wrote: post #21

are we really still doing this lol? >> Kubernetes is feature-rich, yet these “enterprise” capabilities turned even simple tasks into protracted processes. I don't agree. After learning the basics I would never go back. It doesn't turn simple tasks into a long process. It massively simplifies a ton functionality. And you really only need to learn 4 or 5 new concepts to get it off the ground. If you have a simple websi…

The "...You probably don't either" part is where the argument loses all of its weight. How do they know what I or anyone else needs?
Post reply on HN