Kubernetes is not the point
bettyjunod.com
Kubernetes is not the point
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Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#2Kubernetes is a very capable and versatile system to build a platform on top of it.
Other articles have zeroed in on the missing piece: that unusual intersection of a product mindset with infrastructure expertise.
Without that product mindset, "platform" is just another word for "kubernetes". It's there because it is the popular thing to do or because no one gets fired for implementing it
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#3[dead]
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#4Kubernetes isn't the platform. It's an extremely complex platform that enables better (meaning "more purpose built and friendlier to use") platforms to be built on top of it. Kubernetes is a big box of tools. You can either hire people that know how to use the tools for you, or use a solution where someone else picked out all the tools in the box you needed and made simpler and more opinionated interfaces for them.
Of course, in the latter case, you might end up in the predicament where the solution's creators had different opinions than you. And then you either live with the disagreement, or circle back to hiring people that know how to use the complex big box of tools.
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#5I read the whole thing and I'm not sure I understand what IS the point except that things are too complex? A whole lot of words for not a lot of content.
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#6I don't agree exactly. The standardization in Kubernetes has brought calm to the chaos. Having controllers which act as the public interfaces for additional capability in ways that can integrate with other controllers cleanly is transformational. I have vendors supporting the interfaces that Kubernetes has defined which commoditizes the vendor, which is exactly what I want in a platform. I am not locked into a vendor because they are using these generic, interchangeable interfaces.
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#7I read the whole thing and I'm not sure I understand what IS the point except that things are too complex? A whole lot of words for not a lot of content.
Yeah, the way I read it, it boils down to "I worked on Docker. Kubernetes is great but too complex for developers to actually use." Which yes, is something that everyone who isn't fooling themselves has been saying since its inception. I've been managing on prem kubernetes clusters for the better part of a decade, a lot of it makes sense to me now, but was absolutely painful to learn. In my opinion the article would be better if it had a clear goal for the future, but I couldn't find one.
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#8I read the whole thing and I'm not sure I understand what IS the point except that things are too complex? A whole lot of words for not a lot of content.
Yeah, the way I read it, it boils down to "I worked on Docker. Kubernetes is great but too complex for developers to actually use." Which yes, is something that everyone who isn't fooling themselves has been saying since its inception. I've been managing on prem kubernetes clusters for the better part of a decade, a lot of it makes sense to me now, but was absolutely painful to learn. In my opinion the article would…
Yeah exactly.
There is no good solution here as in order to have a SIMPLE platform, you need to really reduce the amount of use-case you support to a couple options only. The reality is that every single company I have worked for has a ton of different services with different requirements. Those choices end up being reflected on the platform that now needs to be able to run all of them. If you have a single simple use-case then you should just run that simple use-case on a boring EC2 instance with a boring dockerd and a boring NLB in front (as an example) but the reality is that this is almost never the case.
If you have a lot of different workloads to run at scale there is no better tool than Kubernetes. The complexity comes from its power to run almost anything you want
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#9Serious question: If everyone ultimately wants the usability of Heroku - which I can believe - why didn't Cloud Foundry take off?
Am I (and Betty Junod, and Seth Vargo) wrong about the desirability of Heroku's interface? Was Cloud Foundry far worse than Kubernetes, or did it just not get traction?
I admit that's a pretty loaded question, so I should give context: I dealt with Cloud Foundry from the user side, not the admin side. This was around 2016, and I had very little exposure to what else was going on with it. But I was impressed that they some key elements of Heroku-style PaaS seemingly working fine.
So if it was far harder to get going than Kubernetes, that's a good explanation. But I'm guessing there's much more to it than that.
Re: Kubernetes is not the point
#10Not sure if "Kubernetes is too complicated" is much of a constructive statement. The last paragraph was the main takeaway: product should justify the platform rather than the other way around. PaaS tools like Heroku and Render are simply a nice facade for the underlying K8S infra. Developers SHOULD make infra a part of their job if they are building anything that will reach eyes other than their own.