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by mark242
679 days ago
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Here's what I would like from a Kubernetes-like system. I have a collection of machines. I have a very simple file that defines A) what I want to run, B) how the pieces communicate to each other, and C) how I want it to scale. Make that work without me having to think about any of the underlying infrastructure. (If this sounds suspiciously similar to Heroku, there you go) |
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I once interviewed at a place where their notion of "scaling" is to turn up the knob on Heroku. They also pay for it. They did not have anyone on their team who knew what questions to ask. They had grown to the point where they had outgrown their approach, and yet, have never developed the in-house capability.
I mentioned the Cynefine framework elsewhere, and I'll mention it again. Infrastructure and how it supports application, users, stakeholders, is a complex system.
A lot of people treat this as if it were in the complicated, or even clear domain. For certain class of use-cases, you can get away with this. But a company itself is a complex adaptive system, whose needs changes as it matures and scales ... or it doesn't, and it collapses.
The Cynefine framework describes four different domains, and the way you make decisions are different for each of them. You start getting in trouble when you attempt to use the decision-making process for one domain to a different domain. This often happens when the situation has evolved without the decision-makers noticing. It is easier for experts to see how clear domains changes to complicated domains, but it is more difficult to see when complicated domains change to complex domains.
Kubernetes is a sophisticated, adaptive, extensible tool for the complex domain. If it seems overly complex, it is because the domain is complex, and is not necessary if you are working from the complicated or clear domain.