What does Kubernetes accomplish in a self-hosting environment?
Unlike literally every other random assemblage of jazz you might possibly stumble into- which will be neither a toaster nor an air-frier, but some weirdo alien device a couple handful of earthlings have seen- you'll have a hope of getting better with this broadly known system. Otherwise, it's a: "Great! You went with Xin! It has flaky documentation, no one uses it on prod, but look at all the great boxes it says it can tick! And it's so much simpler!"
There's many many good pieces about, sure. But for real, there are zero assemblages, zero meta-solutions that let individual computing problem/answers slot in, as compared to Kubernetes. There's nothing remotely as meta-versatile. That's the use case, that which defines it against everything else: it's meta architecture that works to define how we'd get answers to any architecture problem. It's a viable answer to every system setup, unlike everything else which has narrowed, winnowed concerns.
You try to brush off, saying, it's my opinion here. That's a small slight, but generally, there's just nothing remotely of interest to the public anywhere near as broadly capable, that serves anywhere near a wide of range of concerns, that is anywhere near as flexible. (Counter-example me!) There's a variety of other piecemeal ideas out there- Hashicorp has a constellation of ideas that are all pretty good & which one can assemble. Doubter's gonna doubt, but the core premise of kubernetes- an all-purpose malleable api-server that records shit, operators that make the shit real, is an intelligble solid consistent base that underpins so much more, unifies & makes sense of computing so much better, so profoundly generally, across such a broader range of big & small computing, than anything else has remotely neared, that it is obvious & clear to those who try this better/general/pro-social/well-adopted paradigm of systems to be a repeatable, knowable, clear, enunciated & learnable way, that there's really no other platform appliance is worthy of mentionable compare.
If you do not have an answer to “What does this accomplish?” that includes a simple answer that maps to the word “accomplish” it’s perfectly acceptable to move on!
I’ll repeat my toast analogy: A toaster accomplishes toast very well in a way that a deep fryer does not. It isn’t usually suggested that anyone even attempt making toast in a deep fryer for reasons that are obvious to most people that have used one.
You’ve been asked “Why the toaster?” and your answer is “paradigms” ?
I can’t make a paradigm in a toaster.
Edit: To make sure I don’t elicit more information about Kubernetes in general, I want to clarify that the original question was about using Kubernetes by the creators of this project, within their intended use cases.
Out of the box, there are a bunch of builtin kube applicances/answers: Kubernetes runs processes/containers, network configuration, storage, and load-balancing/ingress. Adding vpn/wireguard, logging, metrics, whatever else have you will follow the same templates & ideas. But I think we're down to counting trees (number of builtin objects/appliances) rather than grokking the forest (that there's a general api-server-aka-state/operator dual concept that works everywhere, with many abundant appliance/use-cases slotting in & operated on the same way) when we myopically focus on individual use cases. And ignore the system.
> If you do not have an answer to
I think I did! I suggested a general, all-purpose, well known flexible system applicable everywhere. It just didn't click for you.
And in counter, please- requesting again- answer what you would suggest in lieu of Kubernetes please. So far you've had only negative, degrading, downputting things to say, and I'd like to see you try to make a positive cases for something, sometime, anytime, so we might have some reasonable comparison to assess & reason over. Alongside your destructive negative criticism, offer some positive examples of what you think does better, offers a clearer example of accomplishment. So we can compare & assess, have a field of play rather than only you taking shots against the champion forever. If you don't have any counter-examples, I'm not sure how we can keep discussing the worth of this system/paradigm!
They are all theoretically good ways to make toast.
You ask: What did you use to make your toast?
They respond: A toaster.
As a bit of banal, passive curiosity you think “Why the toaster in particular?”
And then somebody shows up calling you a toaster hater
I will say however, that we've entirely stopped defending that it runs Kubernetes. There is a subset of people who hate that or want to debate it endlessly. It's not germane to what we're trying to accomplish - it's just a small benefit to a niche group of users. We could have just as easily based ourselves on Docker instead.
You might not like my phrasing, but asking you what you saw, what possibilities would arise to you is a general & sincere question & you being so mortally offended at being challenged doesn't feel fair either. It would have been interesting to see you either try to guess, or put in 3 minutes of looking around & state more clearly what was unapparent about how these might be related. I was hoping you'd work to carry a little water in the discussion, to help illuminate what your mindset was, after a little trying.
> Get ahold of yourself
This is weirdly aggressive.
What an embarrassing shit show over an innocent question you could've simply ignored if you didn't feel like answering.
In my toaster analogy, when asked “what did you accomplish with the toaster?” they responded with (I’m paraphrasing here) “A better toasting experience for the PiBox team because of our existing toasting skillset” more or less.
It was a response that was easily distilled into a single sentence and moved past. Somehow they conveyed that without calling people “haters” or “problems” and I genuinely think that is because that poster had a good grasp of Kubernetes and its use cases.
I’ve done some searching and there are plenty of friendly and informed people on Twitter that are able to answer questions about the pros and cons of Kubernetes if you search #k8s and #kubernetes. I have learned not to ask rektide any sort of question for obvious reasons.