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Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

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Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#81
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker and Kubernetes are on completely different layers. You can't do those comparisons. Kubernetes is like an operating system, Docker is like a format for the executable files. There is no problem with servers. We're running Kubernetes in production on a single Linux machine, essentially using Kubernetes as an alternative OS.

Kubernetes seems to be intended for large, complex environments but yours seems to not meet that category. What have you gained by using it?

(Not OP) I'm running a single node kubernetes cluster because it provides much needed isolation between services as well as, and that's the biggest part, a aingle and simple way to have everything in one place.

I can duplicate a service I'm running 1:1 with a new version for testing in 2 minutes, I can tear it down in 2 seconds. I can roll back changes in one command, I can wipe the server and reinstall everything from scratch in 25 minutes.

The environment is completely reproducible, and I can with a single command see every config that applies to a service.

All the usual deployment trouble is gone, no more weird setups and config situations. All the weirdness is nicely encapsulated.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#82
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a small developer Do you need kubernetes? I know the hype cycle is mad for copying big tech, but if stackoverflow can operate on a couple of IIS instances I’d argue that you almost never need kubernetes.

For me containerization was always about deterministic environments and ease of deployment instead of performance and clustering. But even with these advantages I am currently not using any solution for that. For cloud services this is probably a good idea, even for users to a degree if the provider doesn't already give you a fitting box. But otherwise it is not a must have in my opinion. Maybe that is a mistake and…

> For me containerization was always about deterministic environments and ease of deployment instead of performance and clustering. But even with these advantages I am currently not using any solution for that.

You can get 99% of the way using a stable distribution and a configuration management system (ansible, chef and the like). It's much much simpler than running an orchestration service. I feel most people don't need containers and orchestration, just config management running redundant system designs.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#83
post #45

Google doesn't actually use Kubernetes much, so the "operation hardened internally" argument isn't valid.

This reminds me of Joel Spolsky's fire and motion piece ( https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/ ). To paraphrase a little bit: > Fire and Motion. You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon. The firing forces him to keep his head down so he can’t fire at you. ... The companies who stumble are the ones who spend too much time reading tea leaves to figure out the future direction of Google.…

Felt the same about Polymer. Starry eyed devs open a pre-webpack build terminal, import the if (no else!) and for keywords, build dom nodes manually and tolerate a terrible debugging experience. Youtube loads a few seconds slower in Firefox, since it gets served a polyfil of a runtime and a slower build; Chrome had a head start with a native runtime. Sites built by starry eyed developers simply break on Firefox.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#84
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a small developer Do you need kubernetes? I know the hype cycle is mad for copying big tech, but if stackoverflow can operate on a couple of IIS instances I’d argue that you almost never need kubernetes.

For me containerization was always about deterministic environments and ease of deployment instead of performance and clustering. But even with these advantages I am currently not using any solution for that. For cloud services this is probably a good idea, even for users to a degree if the provider doesn't already give you a fitting box. But otherwise it is not a must have in my opinion. Maybe that is a mistake and…

> For me containerization was always about deterministic environments and ease of deployment instead of performance and clusterin

This! I come from the embedded world with a bit of webui and having yocto for the embedded reproducibility and docker for the infrastructure, I am so happy. No more uncertainty when moving to another machine or upgrading my DEV machine. Nope Everything running right everywhere. Some scriptology and I had a full boot up from tftp for kernel and an ephemeral nfs from an ext4 master, and I could reliably make full system component tests all the way to web browser experience validation.I even had an autopilot simulator spawning ephemerally in a docker. Restarting the containers gave me a clean env again. Pure piece of mind and productivity. The initial investment was big though.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#85
post #54
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother with containers at all at that scale then? We keep on using plain old VMs, while watching everyone rush into containers fashion.

I like the tooling better and suspect that many other developers feel the same. Docker is more like managing and configuring software libraries and dependencies. You just declare what type of environment you want and it's there. If you change the version number of a dependency the old image is discarded and a fresh one is created. The Dockerfile is managed with the source code. VirtualBox feels like installing a regu…

> VirtualBox feels like installing a regular computer. It takes a long time and is a lot of manual work. If you want to change something you login on the existing VM until you reach a point where you no longer remember all the changes you've made over the years. The machine is unclean.

Unfair comparison. People running on VMs usually rely on configuration management to do the install+config part. Think of stuff like Ansible as a Dockerfile for VMs/bare-metal.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#86
post #46
post #15

The problem i have with cubernetes is the following: I as a small developer and small server owner don't have the ressources to even get started. The first thing i see at cubernetes is a cluster. Why a cluster. Do i need to cluster my Raspberry pi's to get something out of it? Do i need to buy 3 servers just to run 5 containers? In docker its easy. Download Docker. Start container. Install container manager like plat…

> as a small developer Do you need kubernetes? I know the hype cycle is mad for copying big tech, but if stackoverflow can operate on a couple of IIS instances I’d argue that you almost never need kubernetes.

Yeah, for my side projects I just use gitlab CI + docker compose.

Builds use the dind images on gitlab's runners to build an image and push to their container registry.

For deployments I have a host with a personal CI runner instance on Linode's smallest instance type which can access a user on the "production" host when SSHing over a private network, and has the docker-compose command allowed in the sudoers file. Then it can run docker-compose up to deploy. The key for this is passed to the job via gitlab's secrets UI so someone getting read access to either of my hosts wouldn't be able to do anything.

While people will rightly point out that this does mean the CI builder effectively has root on the "prod" host, for a side project it's enough for me. I might investigate podman/buildah some weekend when I have time as apparently that allows for rootless container launches.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#88
post #68
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they solved the high CPU usage problem while it is running (even when no containers are inside)? I don't like my laptop hot, so never could make a switch.

Yes, it's a real issue. Kubernetes burns too much RAM and CPU even with no workload.

Docker on macOS also suffers from that issue though.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#89
post #15

The problem i have with cubernetes is the following: I as a small developer and small server owner don't have the ressources to even get started. The first thing i see at cubernetes is a cluster. Why a cluster. Do i need to cluster my Raspberry pi's to get something out of it? Do i need to buy 3 servers just to run 5 containers? In docker its easy. Download Docker. Start container. Install container manager like plat…

>> I as a small developer and small server owner... You'll never ever need either Docker or Kubernetes or even the latest and greatest javascript frameworks. I started running a server before I knew anything and that server is still purring along happily. But if you're ever targeting an enterprise, either as a freelancer or as an employee, those words are invaluable in your resume. It of course helps if you actually…

> You'll never ever need either Docker or Kubernetes or even the latest and greatest javascript frameworks.

I agree with "no need for k8s and the latest JS frameworks", but strongly disagree on not needing Docker. It is extremely useful for setting up separate development instances for your projects - no matter if you're doing PHP development with N different versions of PHP (as some sites may still be stuck at 5.6 while others are already requiring 7.2 due to Composer dependencies) or, worse, nodejs and Java where each project will have its own requirements for node, Tomcat and whatnot.

I personally set up one mega-container for each project which runs all the services required - mysql/pgsql for the database, apache as frontend / mod-php, if needed Tomcat - and can simply shut them down when I'm done working on a project instead of having the databases and servers all consuming memory and resources all the time.

Re: Why doesn’t anyone weep for Docker?

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me containerization was always about deterministic environments and ease of deployment instead of performance and clustering. But even with these advantages I am currently not using any solution for that. For cloud services this is probably a good idea, even for users to a degree if the provider doesn't already give you a fitting box. But otherwise it is not a must have in my opinion. Maybe that is a mistake and…

> For me containerization was always about deterministic environments and ease of deployment instead of performance and clustering. But even with these advantages I am currently not using any solution for that. You can get 99% of the way using a stable distribution and a configuration management system (ansible, chef and the like). It's much much simpler than running an orchestration service. I feel most people don't…

To be honest I only very recently got to know ansible and related techs so I maybe missing an opportunity to learn something. Even so I think you are forgetting the DEV part. With ansible and chef you can make a deployment to the real infra. With containers you can have infra locally in your DEV environment and have clean slates. The similitude of the DEV environment and the production are crucial for devops. There is nothing more annoying for developers than having something work locally and then needing some weird quirk for the production/ci. A lot of political infighting and hate for devops. I saw this being a tech lead for build system in a fortune 500 company. Ah they have redhat based distro. Ultra stable! Problem is nothing from outside the company works out of the box, leading to blessed machines. A disaster that lead to so much unofficial workarounds that it is not funny. Lol the kernel is so old it cannot run docker:) Ubuntu is better but ultra stable machines will tend to massive customizations that are very hard to keep when you finally want to upgrade. It was very common to reach End of Life of LTS distros, and then have the server upgrade being a nightmare due to the long evolution that happened in the mean time.
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