Look at stupid, sexy Kubernetes with all the cloud firms hanging off its musclebound arms Red Hat, better known for its Linux distro despite years of work in middleware and Java, last week pushed further into cloud through the purchase of CoreOS for $250m. CoreOS is a 130-strong container startup known for its enterprise-oriented Kubernetes platform Tectonic, the Quay container registry, Container Linux and a …
There certainly is a lot of hype over Kubernetes, not sure it has won, yet, though. I see job offers left right and center looking for Kubernetes experts ... highly paid etc ...
If you want a Kubernetes expert, ok, but I want to work from home, with a FreeBSD or Linux desktop, Mac or Windows don't cut it, a salary in 6 figures, and I might consider your job offer ;-), my mailbox is full right now ... expect a response time from 2 to 3 weeks ...
"... the Google-spawned cloud orchestration system has gained major traction in the past year."
Any system can gain traction when the company behind it has wide-scale control of web search results. Try sticking "docker container orchestration" into Google's search vs other engines: unsurprisingly, "Kubernetes" is plastered all over Google's top results.
"GOOGLE INVENTED KUBERNETES"
Um, yeah. Here's something else for you: Microsoft "invented" Windows - they also "invented" Internet Explorer. And then they got into a lot of trouble by using the fact that the vast majority of desktop PCs run Windows to push people into using Internet Explorer. It's called anti-competitive behaviour, and it's illegal in a lot of places...
When I first started researching Kubernetes, I immediately came across the online interactive tutorial, which is a very useful hands-on introduction. Straight away I had a positive impression of the project and understood what it was for.
It just seems that, despite the buzzword-filled nature of the sector, they understood that you need people at the coal face using your product and that's why they have done well.
Whilst Kubernetes is very cool and there are indeed a load of companies getting interested in it, there's a bit of a looming problem that'll start hitting enterprises using it in the not too distant future... Support Lifecycle.
Docker CE has a 4 month support window, EE (which you have to pay for) has a whole year!. Kubernetes has a three release support policy, and as there's one release every 3 months, companies will be getting at most 9 months of support.
For fast moving start-ups this is (possibly) fine, but for enterprises who are used to 5-10 year support policies, I think it'll come as a rude awakening.
Whilst Kubernetes is very cool and there are indeed a load of companies getting interested in it, there's a bit of a looming problem that'll start hitting enterprises using it in the not too distant future... Support Lifecycle.
Go ahead, fork, a business-centric fork with 10 year support cycles ... shit, no, THAT was my idea!
If you have a customer on a 10 years support cycle it usually means they have outdated kit left right and center or MS software, and the business as such will vanish sooner rather than later ...after the n'th 0wnage ... some people never lean ... experts would be really grateful if you would kindly leave the industry, I heard they were looking for window cleaners and surface experts* .... in Hull!
* do note the lower case letters, there, NOT a typo ;-)
Worse, he assumes that companies won't update for 10 years. Literally no one does that. The longest you see is infrastructure software like Vmware, where there are still idiots running 5.0 because they can't be assed to upgrade to 5.5 or 6.x.
When it comes to development platform, esp containers or anything else cloud native, 9 months is like 5 years. This fellow definitely does not grok the concept of microservices.
"Literally no one does that."
^^ Hmmm, whaaa? Sounds like you haven't been around too many "enterprises", small or large. I once worked for an extremely technically-advanced hardware sensor company (NASA one of our main clients), where I was lucky enough to work with some of the brightest engineers I've ever gotten a chance to be around, yet, unlucky enough to be responsible for "support" and "maintenance" of a load balancer that hadn't been patched (and couldn't be, cause no support) in over 12 years. Just one example of many in my career. I once saw a Sun box with a 14 year uptime.
How did you manage to mention all three but completely ignored that Google and Cisco have worked for months and now launched a key ready enterprise Kubernetes platform? K8s pods, with Istios and Contiv, extending and spanning GCP/GKE seamlessly into on premises pods.
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