
Deis to Join Microsoft - gabrtv
https://deis.com/blog/2017/deis-to-join-microsoft/
======
dankohn1
Congrats to Gabe and the whole Deis team on the acquisition.

For folks not familiar with Helm, it's basically apt-get for Kubernetes, but
with the ability to deploy complex multi-tier systems. It has now graduated
out of the Kubernetes incubator.

And their Workflow product (also open source), is basically the smallest piece
of software that lets you run Heroku buildpacks on top of Kubernetes. So, you
can get a 12-factor PaaS workflow, and still have the full Kubernetes API
underneath if and when you need it.

Update: And I left out my all-time favorite piece of marketing collateral,
their Children's Illustrated Guide to Kubernetes (available both as children's
book and video): [https://deis.com/blog/2016/kubernetes-illustrated-
guide/](https://deis.com/blog/2016/kubernetes-illustrated-guide/)

(Disclosure: I'm the executive director of CNCF and Gabe has been a super
valuable member.)

~~~
frik
So Deis PaaS is dead. Is this now a AquireHire to get Kubernetes to Azure?

[https://deis.com/blog/2017/deis-paas-v1-takes-a-
bow/](https://deis.com/blog/2017/deis-paas-v1-takes-a-bow/)

~~~
mns06
Brendan Burns (k8s co-founder) joined Microsoft last July, so this is
certainly not their first move in the Kubernetes area.

------
ridruejo
The industry is consolidating around the Kubernetes ecosystem. This
acquisition is an example of many others that will follow as the major players
want to build up their offerings and expertise.

------
rbanffy
Every time someone is acquired by Microsoft I can't avoid feeling sad for
them.

It's true they'll get a decent amount of money, that, from now on, they have
infinitely deep pockets, that they'll have some of the best keyboards and
mice, but it's also true their wiki will end up in Sharepoint and their
e-mails in Exchange.

~~~
CydeWeys
And what's the fate of their source control system?

~~~
cronin101
Microsoft is aligning on Git, so it's unlikely that anything will change (and
the horror stories of the past are no-longer applicable for new aqui-hires.)

~~~
CydeWeys
Vanilla git can't handle a repo the size of Microsoft's combined codebase
though; surely there must be some additional secret sauce involved?

~~~
outside1234
There is no combined Microsoft codebase

~~~
pbhjpbhj
From the cited Microsoft link:

>"the Windows codebase has over 3.5 million files and is over 270 GB in size."
//

~~~
porges
That's just Windows. There's no combined codebase akin to Google's.

------
edude03
Wait what? Didn't the Deis team just join EngineYard last year? Furthermore,
why would Microsoft want Deis? They haven't really shown an interest in
Kubernetes thus far.

~~~
numo16
> They haven't really shown an interest in Kubernetes thus far

Except for helping with Windows Server support for kubernetes[0] and
supporting kubernetes in Azure Container Services[1]

[0]: [http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/windows-server-support-
kub...](http://blog.kubernetes.io/2016/12/windows-server-support-
kubernetes.html)

[1]: [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/kubernetes-now-
genera...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/kubernetes-now-generally-
available-on-azure-container-service/)

~~~
outside1234
And hiring the founder away from Google (Brendan Burns).

------
RRRA
I'm really curious how people administer their K8S clusters for installation,
upgrades, etc.

I'm very familiar with docker, which we've been using for over 2 years. But
now, we're trying to get k8s running, with either kargo, kubeadm, deb
packages, etc.: They all failed with different bugs on different set of clouds
/ settings. (Trying to stick to running it on Ubuntu xenial).

Not sure if it's because 1.6.* just came out of the oven when I started...?

Thanks to Minikube, I understand how powerful k8s can be, and actually find
kubectl quite simple to use, but I'm confused by how fragile and complex
installation and setup seems to be. I'm unsure how someone is supposed to
maintain this system considering how (overly?) modular it is and the bugs I've
encountered. Knowing that docker has a LOT of bugs, and k8s builds on top of
it, I'm a bit scared. And there is no clean documentation on how to install
it, with sections for all your choices, in a generic/agnostic way (deb+rpm
distros, cloud integration or simple abstract VMs, ...)

What is you workflow? :)

~~~
pat2man
We are using [https://github.com/openshift/openshift-
ansible](https://github.com/openshift/openshift-ansible) which gets you a k8s
cluster + user management and a great web interface. I actually learned a lot
about cluster management from that repo since it goes through all the standard
best practices.

------
briandear
I really hope Microsoft doesn't hurt this. For example, there are great docs
for AWS and Google, but given the way they've ruined Skype, I really hope they
don't turn this into some kind of Azure-focused system while dropping support
for AWS, etc. Congrats to the awesome Deis team -- let's just hope that
Microsoft doesn't just run it into the ground when it comes to non-Azure
platforms.

------
alpb
Congratulations Gabriel! Having worked on containers space in Microsoft Azure
before, my opinion is that this is a great move by Microsoft. In the past
years, I've seen the company struggle in finding great talent in OSS/Linux
stack. Simply, there are a lot of areas Microsoft could expand, but there is
not enough talent. Deis will definitely take a ton of expertise in open source
software and community to Microsoft. Now that Kubernetes is a big part of
Azure’s container service, Deis brings a lot of fresh blood to Microsoft. I
hope it works out great for both companies (and the open source Kubernetes
community).

------
pvsnp
I'm somewhat surprised. Why would Microsoft put weight into Deis vs use
something like Kubernetes or Mesos? I haven't kept up with Deis's growth and
I'm obviously very happy for them, but I'm curious what the gain is. Based on
HN posts and other devops forums, Kubernetes eeems to have gained a lot of
momentum recently.

~~~
gabrtv
Best to think of Deis as a Kubernetes company. We are much more than the PaaS
solution many folks know us for.

~~~
Artemis2
Congratulations! There are few Kubernetes experts on the market right now.
Deis is certainly a smart acquisition for Microsoft (along with hiring Brendan
Burns).

------
luhn
Deis has changed a lot since I last looked at them. They've dropped their
original PaaS and developed an ecosystem on top of Kubernetes. Microsoft has
been showing a lot of interest in Docker, so can see why this acquisition
would make sense for them.

~~~
bacongobbler
> They've dropped their original PaaS

Just to clarify, we never dropped the original PaaS. Deis (now named Workflow)
is still in active development, uses Kubernetes as the underlying scheduler
and has monthly releases. We actually just released v2.13.0 5 days ago. :)
[https://github.com/deis/workflow](https://github.com/deis/workflow)

~~~
yebyen
In a sense it is the same product (for the users, Deis Workflow / Deis v2 is
basically a drop-in replacement for Deis v1, and API Clients such as Deis Dash
[http://deisdash.com/](http://deisdash.com/) can work with both). But in a
very real sense also, the old product was End-of-Lifed and Workflow is a
completely separate and different product.

There is no direct upgrade path from v1 to v2, the branding was changed (new
product name entirely) to coincide with the release of v2, and the v1 LTS
branch is no longer receiving updates, support, or new builds when issues are
identified.

It's kind of like the axe that is passed down from generation to generation
for 150 years. Can't really call it the same axe anymore when you've replaced
the blade and the handle several times over.

(This coming from a happy Deis user that still has living installations of
both v1 and Workflow.)

Congratulations on the acquisition!

~~~
bacongobbler
> the old product was End-of-Lifed

To be fair, we did continue to support Deis v1 for 3 whole years(!), which is
very long considering we're just a small startup. Being woken at 3AM from yet
another obscure etcd/fleet server failure really sucked, and systemd never
truly got along well with Docker making for some fun interactions with Fleet.
Overall (speaking personally as an engineer and support engineer), we are very
happy we made the decision to switch to Kubernetes. Mind you, we were as early
adopter as you could get with Fleet and etcd at the time, and etcd in
particular has been significantly better for us in terms of stability/error
reporting.

> There is no direct upgrade path from v1 to v2

I agree that it sucks there was no upgrade path from v1 to v2, but we felt it
was necessary to make breaking changes to move forward from Fleet into the
world of Kubernetes. That doesn't change the fact that we never dropped the
PaaS product as a whole, though.

> the branding was changed (new product name entirely) to coincide with the
> release of v2

This was actually more to do with us becoming "Deis the company" more-so than
the v2 release. Lots of users were getting confused with "Deis the company"
and "Deis the github project", so we decided to rename it Workflow to help
make it more clear in conversation.

> and Workflow is a completely separate and different product.

Curious to understand how you feel like v2 is a completely different product.
From a user's standpoint the product offering never changed. The API, CLI and
`git push` workflows were all still present in v2 and were drop-in
replacements, save for backwards-incompatible database migrations (hence
v2.0.0). It was just the administration's point of view that changed (Fleet ->
Kubernetes, deisctl -> helm). To me it still feels like the same product, but
I'm curious to hear from you why you feel differently. :)

~~~
yebyen
Please do not take anything I said as an attempt to throw shade or being
critical of your team! As a non-paying customer, I have to say I'm extremely
happy with the support you've delivered (and consistently.) I wish I could
have got my company to throw money at you, but it did not work out.

The kind of support I got from Deis the company is really without comparison
when it comes to Open Source projects anywhere else.

The fact that v2 is a drop-in replacement for v1 really eases the sting of the
fact that there is no direct upgrade path. I still have an old Deis v1 kicking
around because I left the company, transitioned to hourly, and made an
agreement to draw down my hours at this company, where we are in reality
hardly using Deis at all. But in the small capacity we are using it, there is
what I'd call "VMware Levels of Reliability" and so it successfully became a
piece of the infrastructure there.

So it is disingenuous for me to say that I was not able to upgrade my v1
installation. The reason I was not able to upgrade is because there was not
strong interest in upgrading. The unsupported product is as good as our (also
unsupported! but luckily not End-of-Life) VSphere and VSan environment.

It is a different product to me, in short because I am the one administering
it. It runs on a different platform altogether, it has no distributed
filesystem component where the old version did, and it has not really harmed
me in any way that there is no upgrade path. It is just a couple of facts that
led me to the conclusion that they are in fact distinct and other products
that are not directly related to each other, except that they could easily
pass for one another if you asked a user.

I am really happy for you guys, Microsoft is a real big name compared to
EngineYard, and while I could get behind EY+Deis, it's a hard sell for the
Design Review Board. But I can tell them "look, Microsoft is doing this now"
and they will know what that means instantly. Big guns. No joke software.

This is how I've actually felt about Deis from the beginning, but now it's
going to be a much easier sell to get Big Wigs to sign off on. Nobody ever got
fired for buying Microsoft!

~~~
yebyen
Not to mention (but I'll mention)

Your announcement to End-of-Life Deis v1 came what seemed like days before
CoreOS announced their decision to kill Fleet. So, not like there's anything
you could have done about it, save deciding to pick up supporting Fleet for
yourselves.

(And I like fleet, but I understand thoroughly why it was a good decision for
CoreOS and for Deis to end support for it. It was a wholly inferior solution,
begging for a replacement.)

------
briandear
"Microsoft has a storied history of building tools and technologies that work
for developers."

I'm not sure how I feel about that statement.

------
devy
Does this mean a commitment of Microsoft on k8s ecosystems or simply a talent
acquisition or both?

~~~
patrickaljord
They've just hired one the founder of Kubernetes so my guess would be yes
[https://www.onmsft.com/news/google-engineer-kubernetes-
found...](https://www.onmsft.com/news/google-engineer-kubernetes-founder-
brendan-burns-joining-microsoft-azure)

------
olalonde
Congrats to the Deis team! I was an early adopter and the team was just
fantastic at answering questions, implementing feature requests and resolving
issues on GitHub.

PS: I'll take this opportunity to shamelessly promote my web based Deis UI:
[http://github.com/olalonde/deisdash](http://github.com/olalonde/deisdash)

------
xena
Congrats on the acquisition, I'm just sad I can't be there to congratulate
you.

------
Sevrene
What!? I never would have expected this, quite a surprise. I hope it works out
for them.

------
jasonmccay
If Deis was that valuable, one could assume that EY agreed to this arrangement
because they are low on cash and needed the money.

How often is a company, in effect, acquired twice?

------
kayoone
Love Deis, we have used V1 and V2 (with kubernetes) at my current job with
success, but also had weird stability and reliability issues from time to
time.

------
ksikka
The Deis team was extremely helpful over IRC when I was building on top of
their PaaS. Great team and culture, Microsoft is lucky to have them.

------
AlexB138
Well, that's definitely a way to buy yourself into the Kubernetes ecosystems.
Congratulations to the Deis team!

------
sameersbn
Congratulations to the Deis Team. It's been a pleasure working with them on
the Helm project.

------
WrtCdEvrydy
Next week, Flynn to Join Apple.

Let the PaaS arms race begin.

