Kubernetes is NOT a container orchestrator

Kubernetes is NOT a container orchestrator(flanksource.com)

18 points by moshloop 6 years ago | 16 comments

Click bait title. The point of this article is that Kubernetes is indeed an orchestrator, but "so much more". However, it's mostly a bunch of random conversational pieces, like mentioning the slack channel has 90k users

moshloop 6 years ago | |

The size of the slack channel alludes to the size of the eco-system, and the scale at which Kubernetes is solving not just technical coding problems, but non-technical communication problems

vkazanov 6 years ago |

How about "Kubernetes as a complexity generator"? :-)

moshloop 6 years ago | |

Kubernetes isn't the source of complexity - it is the problem domain of building and operating distributed systems that are fundamentally and essentially complex.

Compare the complexity of Kubernetes to Openstack - the next most similar project in the same problem space, and you will find Kubernetes is actually pretty simple.

bauerd 6 years ago | | |

OpenStack and Kubernetes serve different purposes. Despite the article, Kubernetes at its core really is a container orchestrator. OpenStack is a collection of software you'd use for running a mini-AWS on bare metal infrastructure.

eldelshell 6 years ago | | |

I think you meant OpenShift. OpenStack works with full fledge VMs not containers.

MoroCode 6 years ago |

My question is then what counts as a container orchestrator. Not to shit on the article but why over-complicate the definition of an already over-engineered system

moshloop 6 years ago | |

You can solve container orchestration problems using Kubernetes, but you can also solve them using Swarm, Nomad and Mesos.

Kubernetes is the most popular, precisely because it is not over-engineered, the level of engineering matches the problem domain.

parvenu74 6 years ago |

Is there even a viable alternative to Kubernetes at this point? For that matter, is there an alternative to YAML for defining Kubernetes setups?

mads 6 years ago | |

I find that nomad is actually a very good alternative.

moshloop 6 years ago | |

Sure, https://github.com/Azure/draft doesn't require any YAML and deploys onto Kubernetes.

I remember someone also doing a demo of configuring your kubernetes deployment on your Java objects directly.

eldelshell 6 years ago | |

OpenShift of course. And no, there are no alternatives AFAIK for the setups.

lytedev 6 years ago | |

I believe there are a few viable k8s alternatives depending on your requirements. We use Jsonnet currently, but CUElang looks neat as well.