Kubernetes has become the de-facto standard for containerized workloads and services. Elad Ben-Israel, CEO and Co-Founder of Wing, argues that many organizations embrace Kubernetes “without proper justifications, often due to external pressure.” In this episode, Ben-Israel looks at the pros and cons of using Kubernetes without proper evaluation.

Highlights of this discussion:

Kubernetes adoption and its justifications

• Ben-Israel says that some users are moving to Kubernetes without proper justifications, often due to external pressure.
• Users may not fully understand Kubernetes or have the necessary DevOps capabilities in-house, leading to a lack of clear reasons for adopting the technology.
• Ben-Israel argues that Kubernetes is not necessary for most use cases, as VMs can provide similar scalability and portability benefits without the need for containers.
• He suggests that the ecosystem around Kubernetes is a major reason to consider using it, as many tools are only available on Kubernetes clusters.

Kubernetes challenges and benefits developers

• Ben-Israel highlights the hidden cost of maintaining a Kubernetes cluster, including the accumulation of maintenance costs over time and the need to maintain multiple clusters for different purposes.
• He also notes that using a managed Kubernetes offering can lock users into a specific vendor or cluster, limiting their flexibility and investment.
• Ben-Israel discusses the trade-offs of using Kubernetes for developer experience, highlighting the potential for increased complexity and maintenance costs.

Cloud computing, Kubernetes, and serverless platforms

• Ben-Israel argues that Kubernetes assumes developers are responsible for everything inside their container, while the cloud offers managed services that allow developers to offload non-functional concerns like deployment and security.
• Kubernetes teams often have a low cloud footprint due to the difficulty of managing non-cluster resources, leading to a mismatch between Kubernetes’ ownership model and the economies of scale offered by the cloud.
• Ben-Israel discusses the challenges of balancing application and platform ownership in cloud computing, arguing that the line between the two is often misplaced in Kubernetes and serverless architectures.

New technologies and patterns for addressing developer pain points

• Developers face challenges in adopting new technologies without overwhelming their development stack.
• Ben-Israel: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like CDK bring software development practices to cloud infrastructure.
• Ben-Israel discusses new tools like Pulumi and Crossplane simplifying cloud infrastructure management, while Cycle.io and fly.io offer container orchestration alternatives without Kubernetes.

Cloud engineering, abstraction, and simulation

• Ben-Israel highlights the importance of abstraction layers in the cloud, citing Kubernetes as an example, and notes that the industry is slowly realizing the value of defining abstraction layers for cloud computing.
• Ben-Israel believes that standardization in this area will lead to more powerful applications and a more efficient industry, despite some controversy around the concept.
• Ben-Israel compares cloud engineering to aerospace engineering, highlighting the need for a simulator to develop and test code efficiently.
• Local cloud simulation is gaining traction, enabling faster development and quality improvements.

Guest: Elad Ben-Israel (LinkedIn)
Company: Wing (Twitter)
Show: Let’s Talk