undefined | Better HN

0 pointscookiecaper7y ago0 comments

k8s is meant to be hard to use. You're supposed to rent space on a k8s cluster from Google. Google has been pumping millions into marketing k8s as a mechanism to improve GCP adoption and establish a foothold in the cloud provider space.

0 comments

6 comments · 1 top-level

dlor7y ago· 5 in thread

I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to make here. k8s is not meant to be a paas, but no one is trying to make k8s harder to use.

I work at Google on a large team of engineers dedicated to making it as easy as possible to use.

cookiecaperOP7y ago

[Disclaimer: this is pure conjecture and represents my opinion only; I'm a Google outsider.]

For a while, "AWS" and "the cloud" were practical synonyms; it was very rare that anyone meant not-AWS. In my opinion, Kubernetes is a major piece of Google's strategy to turn that tide and improve their marketshare.

Does throwing "a large team of engineers" at a problem typically result in something that's "as easy as possible to use"? "Design-by-committee" is not a term of endearment.

A sibling comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18958077 notes that "there are a ton of nicer UIs for Kubernetes", but that they're sold separately as proprietary PaaS platforms. Even if we pretend like GCP/GKE isn't one of them, Kubernetes-The-Platform will be impacted by the interests of its primary vendors and advocates, whether or not certain teams at Google are keen to admit that.

geggam7y ago

The fact it takes a team of highly skilled engineers from the top of the talent pool trying to make it easy should tell you perhaps the design is wrong ?

ecnahc5157y ago

Or that to run a secured, highly available platform with the type of features k8s provides is non-trivial beyond basics.

Aeolun7y ago

What would make it easy is a good non-gcp GUI

hjacobs7y ago

I agree, some better UI for end users would be awesome: Kubernetes Dashboard kind of works, but is pretty limited and more a "kubectl in the browser". There are a ton of nicer UIs for Kubernetes, but they are all part of the value-add of proprietary platforms AFAIK (think about all the managed K8s offerings out there).

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse