Maybe You Don't Need Kubernetes (2019)
All these &quot;maybe you don&#x27;t need this or that X&quot; posts die in an instant when the user already knows how to do X (when the learning curve argument is gone).<p>Let&#x27;s get it right:<p>Kubernetes is really really cheap. I can run 20 low volume apps in a kubes cluster with a single VM. This is cheaper than any other hosting solution in the cloud if you want the same level of stability and isolation. It&#x27;s even cheaper when you need something like a Redis cache. If my cache goes down and the container needs to be spun up again then it&#x27;s not a big issue, so for cheap projects I can even save more cost by running some infra like a Redis instance as a container too. Nothing beats that. It gets even better, I can run my services in different namespaces, and have different environments (dev&#x2F;staging&#x2F;etc.) isolated from each other and still running on the same amount of VMs. When you caculate the total cost saving here to traditional deployments it&#x27;s just ridiculously cheap.<p>Kubernetes makes deployments really easy. docker build + kubectl apply. That&#x27;s literally it. Deployments are two commands and it&#x27;s live, running in the cloud. It&#x27;s elastic, it can scale, etc.<p>Kubernetes requires very little maintenance. Kubernetes takes care of itself. A container crashes? Kubes will bring it up. Do I want to roll out a new version? Kubes will do a rolling update on its own. I am running apps in kubes and for almost 2 years I haven&#x27;t looked at my cluster or vms. They just run. Once every 6 months I log into my console and see that I can upgrade a few nodes. I just click ok and everything happens automatically with zero downtime.<p>I mean yes, theoretically nothing needs Kubernetes, because the internet was the same before we had Kubernetes, so it&#x27;s certainly not needed, but it makes life a lot easier. Especially as a cheap lazy developer who doesn&#x27;t want to spend time on any ops Kubernetes is really the best option out there next to serverless.<p>If learning Kubernetes is the reason why it&#x27;s &quot;not needed&quot; then nothing is needed. Why use a new programming language? Why use a new db technology? Why use anything except HTML 4 + PHP, right?<p>BTW, learning Kubernetes can be done in a few days.