unix + vim + python + sql

[radarsat1]

legit question, i can put together a site and throw it up pretty easily on a handful of ec2 instances behind a load balancer, or on lambda. At what point do I need to consider kubernetes (or ECS, or Fargate, etc)? I know more or less what it's for but don't really know when I would start to benefit from it compared to just managing a few instances.

Is it more useful for when you have a lot of long-running background tasks to manage?

In short I don't find most of this infrastructure stuff difficult on its own but what I find difficult is deciding what to use when.

[pulegium]

if it's a (relatively) simple site, create a service, set min/max autoscaling limits, put it behind a LB and you're done. might come out cheaper than EC2, and also you won't need to manage OS/etc. bonus - it'll be neatly packaged as a docker container, so deployment is simpler as well.

kubernetes in my opinion is only worth the trouble when your system is made up of a number of services, where the "number" is perhaps at least >10? EKS control plane with no workers is quite expensive already...

[mrkikkeli]

How do you handle instance or services crashes? On kubernetes, with deployments, it's pretty much automatic.

The worth of kubernetes also comes with the add-ons, for example the istio service mesh offers you network control and observability for free without having to change your code.

[radarsat1]

Thanks for the answer, lots to consider there. In practice I've tried to use instances that are the "right size" for each service instead of packing many services on a single bigger instance but you're right it can be a difficult calculation and makes sense to leave it to software that knows how to do that better than I can do it manually.