When considering whether to self-host Kubernetes or use a managed service like Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), it's important to weigh the trade-offs in terms of control, cost, and operational overhead.
- Greater control and flexibility: Self-hosting provides maximum control over the Kubernetes version, features, and upgrade timing. You can customize the cluster to your specific needs.
- Higher resource requirements: Self-hosting demands significant investment in people, skills, time, maintenance, and troubleshooting. Setting up a production-ready cluster involves securing the cluster, services, and internal communications. Administration overhead can be prohibitive for smaller teams.
- Cost Considerations: You'll need to consider the cost of the underlying infrastructure (servers, VMs), as well as the personnel required for setup, maintenance, and security.
- Security Responsibility: You are responsible for securing all aspects of the cluster, including internal communications using TLS encryption, user permissions, container security defaults, node access to control plane components, and access to the etcd database.
- Complexity: Self-hosting requires expertise in areas such as high availability, security, and node management.
Managed Kubernetes Services (e.g., AKS, EKS)
- Reduced administrative overhead: Managed services relieve you of most of the administrative burden, especially the control plane. The cloud provider handles the underlying infrastructure, allowing you to focus on application development.
- Simplified setup: Managed services provide fully working, secure, and highly available clusters in minutes. You can usually create clusters from web interfaces or command-line tools.
- Cost-effectiveness: Managed services can be more cost-effective than self-hosting, especially when considering the human resources required. Many providers offer free tiers for experimentation.
- Standard Kubernetes: Managed Kubernetes services provide a standard Kubernetes platform, ensuring portability. Applications built on these services should also work on other certified Kubernetes platforms.
- Less control: You have limited control over the underlying infrastructure, including the master nodes. Some managed services might disable certain alpha features that could destabilize the cluster.
- Potential Vendor lock-in: Although Kubernetes is a standard platform, using managed services can create some vendor lock-in, but this is often less than self-hosting because you are abstracted from the specific cloud provider's API. Self-hosting Kubernetes may tie you into a specific cloud provider’s API.
Specific Managed Kubernetes Options
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE): Considered a best-in-class managed service with strong integration into the Google Cloud Platform.?
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS): Suitable for those already using AWS, but it may require more setup than other options and charges for master nodes. It is not as seamless an experience as GKE.
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Provides similar features to GKE and allows cluster creation from the web interface or command line. It integrates with other Azure services and can provision temporary pods in Azure Container Instances (ACI) for handling bursts in demand.
- Turnkey Kubernetes solutions: Ready-to-use clusters with a web-based interface, ideal for companies lacking engineering resources but still wanting control over worker nodes. Stackpoint is one such example, which provides unlimited-node clusters with high availability.
- Clusterless Container Services: Services like Amazon Fargate and Azure Container Instances (ACI) remove the need to manage clusters at all, by letting you specify container images and resource requirements. You don't interact with the cluster via kubectl.
- Kubernetes Installers: If self-hosting is necessary, tools like kops, kubeadm, and Kubespray can help set up and manage clusters. kops is a good choice for AWS, while Kubespray supports multiple platforms.
- Prioritize managed services: For most businesses, using a managed Kubernetes service is recommended due to cost, reduced overhead, and higher quality. It allows businesses to focus on their core activities rather than cluster management.
- Consider Turnkey Services: If managed services aren't an option, consider turnkey services as a compromise. These services handle master nodes while you run the worker nodes.
- Self-host only with good reason: Self-hosting Kubernetes should only be considered if there are business reasons preventing the use of managed services.
- Start with Managed services: Managed services are a good way to learn and experiment with Kubernetes.
- Run Less Software: The principle of "run less software" encourages outsourcing cluster operations to managed services.
In summary, while self-hosting offers maximum control, managed Kubernetes services provide a balance between ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and reduced operational overhead for most organizations. The specific choice should align with your organization's skills, resources, and business needs
