Many of the posts I read here are about Docker. Is anybody using Kubernetes to manage their self hosted stuff? For those who’ve tried it and went back to Docker, why?

I’m doing my 3rd rebuild of a K8s cluster after learning things that I’ve done wrong and wanted to start fresh, but when enhancing my Docker setup and deciding between K8s and Docker Swarm, I decided on K8s for the learning opportunities and how it could help me at work.

What’s your story?

  • @[email protected]English
    6•1 year ago

    I find mine useful as both a learning process and as a thing need. I don’t like using cloud services where possible so I can set things up to replace having to rely on those such as next loud for storage, plex and some *arr servers for media etc. And I think once you put the hardware and power costs vs what I’d pay for all the subs (particularly cloud storage costs) it comes out cheaper at least with hardware I’m using.

    • @[email protected]English
      3•1 year ago

      Yes, those are all great uses of it. But could all still be achieved with docker containers running on some machines at home, right?

      Have you ever had a situation where features provided by kubernetes (like replicas, load balancers, etc) came in handy?

      I’m not criticizing, I’m genuinely curious if there’s a use-case for kubernetes for personal self-hosting (besides learning).

      • @[email protected]English
        1•1 year ago

        I was a big proponent of k3s in the homelab, but I’m starting to think otherwise these days. I still expel choice words towards Docker’s networking, but it starts becoming more of a philosophical issue with what the company is doing and whoever decided this kind of networking is nice.

        Is the networking on Podman any better? I understand using k8s at home to learn, but what if you don’t care about learning? I have never seen a point to k8s in homelabs other than in home-datacentres, and I’m starting to veer away from k3s too, since I don’t need extreme HA over 3 machines for my services (I would have used Proxmox if I wanted that).

        Yeah, could someone give me a primer on how Podman is better than Docker? I’m adamant that I don’t want to use anything with the name “Docker” in my lab.