
Why I joined Heptio - stanleydrew
https://dave.cheney.net/2017/09/06/why-i-joined-heptio
======
new299
This is an honest question, and not meant as a dig against any of these
automation tools, as I don't work in devops but:

"I remember, thinking back to when I started to use Puppet, and imagining
about what it would have been like to have those tools in previous jobs, where
automation involved SVN repositories full of perl scripts, and crontab entries
lovingly copy pasta’d between machines"

Is this really the problem people have been trying to solve? Is it that people
were just using hacked together perl scripts and copying files around, then
they moved to Puppet to automate this same process. And now they're moving is
to containers?

Because it always seemed like building your own deb or rpm was a reasonably
neat, and easily deployable solution to these kinds of problems. Whenever I've
had to do it, that's what I've done. I guess there are some limitations to
this. But are there other compelling reasons to use containers in general?

~~~
bboreham
I'm no expert in those earlier tools, but how does "building a deb" look if
the app is in Python or NodeJS, say?

With Docker I can take a base userland, install pip, use pip to add libraries,
then add my own files, and once I've done that and created an "image" it's
just a tarfile: it will unpack everywhere and run.

I can do this without any expertise in pip, rpm, yum, npm, etc., etc. Just
follow a couple of recipes once, and if they work then my containers always
work. That's a key attraction.

~~~
Denzel
> [...] it will unpack everywhere and run.

Hate to be pedantic: it will run on an OS that shares the same kernel or newer
(assuming backwards compatibility).

This type of "run anywhere" statement caused a lot of confusion for me re:
Docker when I first started looking into it.

~~~
bboreham
This is never a problem in practice. All the syscalls for files, sockets,
etc., have stayed the same for years.

[edit] backstopped by Docker requiring at least 3.10

~~~
Denzel
Sure, and what of the users' applications running in the Docker container.

It's just not the type of "run anywhere" I was expecting based on the
marketing/hype. And the more people kept saying "package once, run anywhere"
the more I began to wonder how Docker was able to accomplish that without
being a VM. Short answer: they don't.

I'm not saying Docker isn't valuable. It is. I just wish it was documented
more readily, without having to sift through jargon, that Docker containers
must run on a compatible kernel.

Essentially, I found it confusing how Docker was sold as a _lightweight_ VM.

------
nathan_f77
> Within the next year or two you’ll be able to buy access to a Kubernetes API
> server at every price point; on your laptop, shared as a VPS, in your own
> VPC, or even as an appliance.

If Heptio can really deliver "at every price point", then this would be
amazing. I just want to be able to deploy up a side project for free or very
cheap, and seamlessly scale all the way up to thousands of dollars per month.

Launching a side project on Heroku and AWS seems to cost a minimum of $69.00
per month. I typically need at least a hobby web and worker dyno ($7 each),
Redis Micro for $5, and a Standard 0 Postgres database for $50. (Backups and
continuous protection are important.)

Actually, I just looked at AWS, and it's about the same price to get started.
You could probably start with RDS instance on db.t2.small, for $26. And run
your server and workers on a t2.medium server for $34.

Maybe the only way to start from $0 is to use AWS Lambda and DynamoDB. But it
would be really nice if Kubernetes was as easy to use as Heroku, and you could
also start from $0 with a production-ready service.

~~~
meesterdude
> Launching a side project on Heroku and AWS seems to cost a minimum of $69.00
> per month.

I disagree with your assessment of "minimum". the $7/mo is more than enough
for starting out; enough to validate your idea and serve some customers. If
you need more services, you can get a digital ocean box for $10, with less
"seamless" scaling. or, move to heroku once you have validation.

~~~
nathan_f77
You're right if you're just starting out with no customers. But as soon as you
get your first customer who is paying money and depending on your service,
it's really important to use production-ready services.

------
thomastjeffery
VMs are such a clunky workaround. Sure, lxc keeps the performance ok, but you
still end up with a significant amount of redundant data.

Rather than work around the limitations of Debian-like package management, I
find it easier, and more worth while to just start using more advanced package
managers like Guix or Nix.

------
shaklee3
Does anyone know how Nomad fits in? It seems to have a lot of overlap with
kubernetes, but fewer features and at the moment. Why are they working on
both?

~~~
benley
Heptio appears to be working on Kubernetes, not Nomad. Nomad is a Hashicorp
product. Who is the "they" in your question?

~~~
shaklee3
Hah, sorry, I was getting heptio and hashicorp confused. My mistake!

------
i_am_nomad
Please, can we stop using the word "modulo" in non-mathematical contexts?

~~~
jeeyoungk
thanks for your contentful comment. I'm pretty sure everyone in HN will
appreciate this.

"modulo" in this sense does make sense, because it's abstracting that part out
and mapping it to a equivalence relation.

------
mack1001
Days are numbered for infra software detached from a cloud provider. Cloud
Foundry and VMware folding (partnering with Google Cloud) is a good indicator
that there is no clear path forward. So Kubernetes on prem or custom rolled on
a cloud will not win the fight against GKE or ECS. Openstack,DC/OS, Openshift
are all risky bets from a career standpoint.

~~~
rdtsc
Or is it the other way, days of overcharging and being locked into a cloud
provider are numbered since the software that runs the infrastructure is not
the secret / proprietary anymore.

See, can spin it either way :-)

~~~
mack1001
Small data point but the uptake of aws lambda has been crazy in spite of the
clear lock-in. Similarly S3 and several other proprietary cloud services. The
cost of infra software is nominal compared to what it takes to manage it and
maintain high uptime.

~~~
moondev
The uptake of k8s has been way more prominent than lambda, and k8s is platform
agnostic. That's the whole reason AWS dosen't offer it as a managed service.

