[nyrikki]

For simple cases I just launch podman containers on long lived hosts with ansible.

You can still add pods if needed and the systemd integration works.

Plus you can actually improve isolation by co-hosting services under separate UIDs.

Like any container it is just co-hosting, and elasticity is a bit slower with autoscaling instances, but it removes most of the complexity of K8s which very few org benefit from or have the culture to support.