So he spent $1k to learn GCP and K8s. That seems like money well spent.
The point about maintenance is a good one if you're running purely static sites. K8s has a steep learning curve, though FWIW I think its probably easier than systemd and standard unix administration + puppet/chef/ansible/etc.
I agree with your second point, too. If you don't view K8s as something you need to know _everything_ about, it's a powerful tool that simplifies things that you'd need multiple tools for. I never really learned provisioning tools like Puppet/Chef/Ansible and Systemd, so k8s was a fresh experience for me. I like it, though, because I really like containers over VMs as the unit that's running my code.
That is, if you really want managed kubernetes. Otherwise you can get a $5 VM on DO.
For something really simple, sure. For something that goes beyond a simple web server, you might be touching on similar competencies to those needed to run your services "the old way"
It might be easier to manage, sure, but to get started, and have an efficient deployment, not necessarily
Examples: your system needs a special service or library that is not available in the distro, you need to deploy a cronjob or similar periodic service, you need multiple services running at the same time (either in the same pod or separately), etc
This is roughly similar to what happens in technology teams all across the business units.
Manager 1: We are streamlining all our product offerings to a Kubernetes container cluster. Why you ask? We want to modernize our stack and we want to attract best talent.
Manager 1 and the team collects the rewards
...... few months later
Manager 2: We reduced the cost of operations by x% by simplifying operations. Aka rolling back to something other than Kubernates.
Manager 2 Collects the rewards
Every time, there is a detailed intelligent write up about what we are going to do and what we did and how awesome it was.
Believe it or not, internet has a way of influencing the really smart people with branding and advertising driving them to a form of resume driven development.
Kubernetes to developers is like what Axe body spray is to teenagers.
Just use Axe Deodorant and women will be all over you.
Cloud Run would be the slightly more general and newer way to do this too, and the free tire there is 2 million req/month. I _think_ he could have migrated containers directly from GKE.
See GCP calculator: https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=36a5f437-98...
