Why is Kubernetes getting so popular? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#531

Post by verdverm » Sat, May 30, 2020, 10:52 AM UTC

ec109685 wrote: post #416

verdverm wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when they fail (especially when the underlying hardware fails... Does AWS live migrate your workloads with zero downtime like Google?

Google can’t migrate if the underlying hardware fails quick enough. I don’t think AWS has talked about live migrate, but given stability of their VMs and rareness of “we need to restart it notices”, it seems like they have something.

I've "experienced" a hard drive failure on both platforms.

On AWS, I was getting pagerduty'd because the solo gateway box was down, we couldn't ssh in so after an hour of no progress with dubugging or support, we just hit the reset button and hoped for the best. Fortunately this worked and later we where told there has a disk failure.

On GCP, I didn't even know and only discovered it in the logs when I was looking for other audit reasons. Turns out your long-running google VMs are being migrated all of the time and you had no idea. They actually have a policy / SLA around it, basically saying they refresh their entire fleet of servers every 6 weeks iirc. Honestly, if AWS is not doing something like this, I'd have increased concerns about leaky security neighbors (i.e. someone who has a VM running for multiple years without software updates. Hopefully you should be protected on shared servers, but it is software afterall)

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#532

Post by wastedhours » Sat, May 30, 2020, 10:52 AM UTC

zelly wrote: post #394

Main benefits of Kubernetes: • Lets companies brag about having # many production services at any given time • Company saves money by not having to hire Linux sysadmins • Company saves money by not having to pay for managed cloud products if they don't want to • Declarative, version controlled, git-blameable deployments • Treating cloud providers like cattle not pets It's going to eat the world (already has?). I was…

Are there any decent GUI services for creating the YAML files?

Most of it can be managed by text boxes on the front-end with selections and then it can just generate or edit the required files at the end of a wizard?

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#533

Post by q3k » Sat, May 30, 2020, 11:17 AM UTC

herval wrote: post #10

silviogutierrez wrote: post #4

For me, and many others: infrastructure as code. Kubernetes is very complex and took a long time to learn properly. And there have been fires among the way. I plan to write extensively on my blog about it. But at the end of the day: having my entire application stack as YAML files, fully reproducible [1] is invaluable. Even cron jobs. Note: I don't use micro services, service meshes, or any fancy stuff. Just a plain…

Have you tried or considered Nomad (from the makers of Terraform)?

Nomad, in its free offering, cannot compete with k8s for organization-wide usage:

- no RBAC

- no quotas

- no preemption

- no namespacing

This means: everyone is root on the cluster, including any CI/CD system that wants to test/update code. And there's no way to contain runaway processes with quotas/preemption.

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#534

Post by namelosw » Sat, May 30, 2020, 11:41 AM UTC

There's nothing too novel about Kubernetes, similar patterns could be seen in Erlang many years ago, though in different abstraction levels.

However, because enterprise ops prior to Kubernetes are both costly and brittle, Kubernetes just works for enterprises.

We had a huge PowerShell codebase and it was a nightmare to maintain. in the meantime, it's no way as robust as Kubernetes.

It's just as simple as that: sure, Kubernetes seems to be complex, but most enterprise stuff are even worse. At the same time, despite they are costly, the quality is usually pretty crappy because those scripts are written under delivery pressure.

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#535

Post by SomeoneFromCA » Sat, May 30, 2020, 11:42 AM UTC

zelly wrote: post #394

Main benefits of Kubernetes: • Lets companies brag about having # many production services at any given time • Company saves money by not having to hire Linux sysadmins • Company saves money by not having to pay for managed cloud products if they don't want to • Declarative, version controlled, git-blameable deployments • Treating cloud providers like cattle not pets It's going to eat the world (already has?). I was…

AFAIK, Yandex Taxi uses "single statically linked, optimized C++ server that can serve".

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#536

Post by max_effort » Sat, May 30, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

zelly wrote: post #394

Main benefits of Kubernetes: • Lets companies brag about having # many production services at any given time • Company saves money by not having to hire Linux sysadmins • Company saves money by not having to pay for managed cloud products if they don't want to • Declarative, version controlled, git-blameable deployments • Treating cloud providers like cattle not pets It's going to eat the world (already has?). I was…

> • Company saves money by not having to pay for managed cloud products if they don't want to

In some cases, the cost of a managed cloud product may be cheaper than the cost of training your engineers to work with K8s. It just depends on what your needs are, and the level of organizational commitment you have to making K8s part of your stack. Engineers like to mess around with new tech (I'm certainly guilty of this), but their time investment is often a hidden cost.

> The alternatives are all based on kludgy shell/Python scripts or proprietary cloud products.

The fact that PaaS products are proprietary is often listed as a detriment. But, how detrimental is it really? There are plenty of companies whose PaaS costs are insignificant compared to their ARR, and they can run the business for years without ever thinking about migrating to a new provider.

The managed approach offered by PaaS can be a sensible alternative to K8s, again it just depends on what your organizational needs are.

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#537

Post by adolfojp » Sat, May 30, 2020, 12:03 PM UTC

geggam wrote: post #70

2kewl4skewl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Containers are the big difference. Kubernetes is one way to deploy containers. Configuration systems like Ansible/Salt/Puppet/Chef/etc are another way to deploy containers. Kubernetes also makes it possible to dynamically scale your workload. But so does Auto Scaling Groups (AWS terminology) and GCP/Azure equivalents. The reality is that 99% of users don't actually need Kubernetes. It introduces a huge amount of comp…

>In fact, Kubernetes is a very dangerous chainsaw that most people are using to whittle in their laps. So many people miss this. k8s is a very complex system and the talent it takes to manage it well, rare. Extremely rare.

Expectations have been set unrealistically high and online communities like this one make matters worse. Big players with dedicated devops teams use Kubernetes all the time so why shouldn't I? It's only a matter of time before "Hello world" tutorials include a chapter on container orchestration.

So we end up with a plethora of full stack developers who can barely keep up with their current development stacks willfully deploying their software on systems that they're just barely competent with.

I know this because I almost deployed a side project with Kubernetes because it was expected of me despite the fact that being mediocre at it was the best that I could hope to become and that's an easy way to chop off a leg or three.

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#538

Post by banifo » Sat, May 30, 2020, 12:15 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #314

StavrosK wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do automated deployments, though? I don't like using K8s for small stuff, but I am also extremely allergic to having to log on to a server to do anything. Dokku hits the sweet spot for me, but at work I would probably use Nomad instead.

What's wrong with logging in to a server? I love logging in to a server and tinkering with it. Sure, for those who operate fleets of hundreds it's not scalable, but for a few servers that's a pleasure.

I'm logging into a server because i need to, not because its 'pleasure'.

I don't hate it but if you need to login to a server regularly because you need to do an apt upgrade, you should have enabled automatic security updates and not login every few days.

If your server runs full because of some logfiles or stuff, you should fix the underlying issue and not needing to login to a server.

You should trust your machines, independently if it is only one machine, 2, 3 or 100. You wanna be able to go on holiday and know your systems are stable, secure and doing their job.

And logging in also implies a snow flake. Doesn't matter as long as that machine runs and as long as you have not that many changes but k8s actually makes it very simple to finally have an abstraction layer for infrastructure.

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#539

Post by Throwaway655249 » Sat, May 30, 2020, 12:15 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #525

Perseids wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do those highly available developers have the same quality as the Rust developers you could get, though? (On average.) I'd wager there is a correlation between interest in deeper topics as required by Rust and good long term design and quality. I've seen how marvelously efficient a small team of very talented people can be be. To replace them with the average highly available developers you would need far more than d…

The problem might be that those people interested in learning new things, solving complicated issues and building good long-term architectures are usually not too interested in sitting in a cubicle without a window. So big companies might be forced to settle for less skilled developers, simply because the top tier is doing their own thing. I assume that's also why acqui-hiring is a thing.

Cubicles? You're too kind! Open floor plans are so much more 'creative' and 'communicative' and storage efficient. Also, they look so nice when you have visitors. (No joke: Our CEO told us he was so impressed with the office of this other company he visited – after being there once and not talking to the employees specifically about how they liked it! I'm shocked again and again how many decisions top managers like to make without listening to those it affects.)

Re: Why is Kubernetes getting so popular?

#540

Post by banifo » Sat, May 30, 2020, 12:17 PM UTC

kasey_junk wrote: post #274

silviogutierrez wrote: post #4

For me, and many others: infrastructure as code. Kubernetes is very complex and took a long time to learn properly. And there have been fires among the way. I plan to write extensively on my blog about it. But at the end of the day: having my entire application stack as YAML files, fully reproducible [1] is invaluable. Even cron jobs. Note: I don't use micro services, service meshes, or any fancy stuff. Just a plain…

Conversely I think the trend of writing infrastructure as yaml may be the worst part of modern ops. It’s really hard to think of a worse language for this.

Why?

We have plenty of yaml 'code' which is simple and does exactly what it needs to do.

For all other usecases, there are plenty of alternatives, including libs for your preferred language.

Most people use the yaml way because its easy and does exactly what it needs to do.

Everyone else has plenty of well supported and well working alternatives.