[mosselman]

I am setting up a swarm deployment of one of my apps as an experiment and I must say the learning curve is hardly there. I tried kubernetes, but I found that most resources that try to explain how it works are focussing too much on github-size deployments. I just want 2 instances of my app, a database and traefik with lets encrypt. Does anyone know of a proper resource for the 'just a tad more than dokku' size?

[shawabawa3]

Setting up a kubernetes cluster itself is probably the biggest hurdle. Also, bear in mind if it's just for a single service the resource overhead of kubernetes may be significant, possibly even more than 50%.

I'd strongly recommend using a hosted k8s - either GKE, EKS, or I believe digital ocean have just released one.

If you want to use an existing VPS just to test it out, see the docs here https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/independent/create-cluster-...

Once you have the cluster running, kompose[1] might be a nice tool if you're used to using docker-compose, however I'd say just use it as a guideline - you'll probably want to rewrite most of what it generates at one point or another

[1] https://github.com/kubernetes/kompose

[PedroArvela]

If you take the approach of a managed kubernetes instance, I really recommend GKE, everything is taken care of for you.

On the other hand EKS offers what I'd call a "managed kubernetes master", everything else is still pretty manual.

[halbritt]

Triple-backing this recommendation.

My team has deployed in AWS using KOPS and EKS, Azure with AKS and ACS-engine, and GKE in GCP

GKE is far, far easier to manage, update, etc.

[sandGorgon]

Same here. I think if you have less than 100 servers, then k8s is a real overkill.

Swarm is much easier to reason about and run. It's a godsend for startups without dedicated devops.

[hinkley]

> dedicated devops.

I have dreamed a dream, but now that dream is gone from me.

[mosselman]

Swarm is working out really nicely so far.

[lykr0n]

You can try Nomad. It's almost stupidly easy to setup and as long as you're comfortable in a command line- easy to hit the ground running.

The one downside is that it doesn't have a feature complete UI and there arn't any good ones out there that do what the Kubernetes webui does.

[zerogvt]

Maybe you can find a similar configuration as a helm chart (https://helm.sh/) (i.e. a k8s pkg manager of sorts).

[mosselman]

Yes, I saw helm and then I had to learn about yet another thing. Its all nice enough technology, don't get me wrong, but I think it isn't for 'running your own heroku' for your side projects. Maybe I am wrong though.

[halbritt]

If what you want to run is already a helm chart, then that makes for a good starting point.

[sambull]

Have you taken a look at Rancher [0]? Easy to spin up a couple nodes and manage them in a single place. It takes care of most of the issues I've found tedious for you with no issue.

[0] https://rancher.com/

[mosselman]

Thank you, but yes I have already tried Rancher. I have had it running with lets encrypt, etc. But it was pretty difficult to juggle all the different concepts: k8s has different concepts than rancher. What I also didn't like was when I had setup some things with the UI, I couldn't figure out how to create yamls for them.