I'd argue that just about every infrastructure that looks like this benefits from Kubernetes (that you're not setting up and managing), and that's a lot of them. The biggest problem is that not enough people have boiled down Kubernetes enough to look like heroku yet. Google Cloud Run is possibly the best example of what Kubernetes can look like/run like -- it runs on (probably a relatively heavily modified) KNative, a project that runs on top of kubernetes.

The "point" of Kubernetes is to drop the difficulty of building a service like Cloud Run to zero. It drops the cost of building a Heroku down to zero. I'd bet my bottom dollar that fly.io and render are running on Kubernetes (maybe they mentioned it somewhere already and I just missed it). With the right cluster set up, building one of those platforms (or others that I won't mention) is almost as simple as setting up stripe checkout and writing a web interface to turn form fields into JSON fields and send them to a kubernetes cluster (possibly with hard multi-tenancy! not to get too into it, but you can literally provision kubernetes clusters from kubernetes clusters, ephemeral or otherwise).

No other tool in the devops world except for maybe the initial orchestrator wave (ansible/puppet/salt/chef) has been this much of a force multiplier. Ok, maybe that's hyperbole, but if adhoc-bash-scripts->ansible is 1->2, Ansible->Kubernetes is similarly 1->2, especially if you consider baked in cloud provider support/innovation.

But here's the secret -- perversely, I'm happy deep down that everyone thinks k8s is too complicated/is a buzzword/isn't worth the effort. All it means to me is that I'm still ahead of the curve.

leoedin

Can you point out any tutorials or guides on how to set up kubernetes simply? I'm wondering what the best way to deploy my app with minimal effort is - you make it sound like kubernetes is the answer.

lemarchr

If you're developing apps in containers, there are platforms that make it really simple to deploy. For example, Cloud Run (Google), Fargate (AWS), or Heroku. What the parent comment is suggesting is that building a platform like Cloud Run, Fargate, or Heroku is much easier on Kubernetes. Kelsey Hightower (principal engineer for Google Cloud) put it well when he stated, 'Kubernetes is a platform for building platforms.'¹

You can still deploy apps directly onto Kubernetes and it works very well for this purpose, but it will require a lot more learning than one of the platforms listed above. If you enjoy learning, Kubernetes is an incredibly powerful and satisfying tool to have in your kit, and the initial learning curve isn't as steep as some make it out to be. If your goal is to deploy apps as quickly and simply as possible however, go with one of the pre-existing platforms.

If you still want to learn Kubernetes then a really great book is Kubernetes Up and Running. It goes into just enough detail at the right point in time to make it simple while still being useful. If you do a bit of Googling, you might find a free copy of the book that used to be offered by Microsoft to promote their Azure Kubernetes Service. Otherwise there's Kubernetes the Hard Way² but that's more focused on administering the Kubernetes cluster itself, rather than how to use the cluster to deploy apps. You'd need a pretty convincing reason to administer your own cluster rather than spinning up a managed cluster on GKE or EKS.

My advice: - Grab a copy of Kubernetes Up and Running - Install minikube on your local PC - Experiment and have fun learning

Hope this helps.

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1. https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower/status/93525292372179353...

2. https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way