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Thank you very much for joining me. This was a pleasure, Lars. I look forward to seeing you next time and talking to you next time, whenever that may be. Hopefully soon.
**Lars Wikman:** Yeah, happy to come back. Thanks for having me.
• The importance of a simple approach to shipping software
• Kubernetes and its complexities
• A discussion on the value of simplicity in application development
• Performance improvements made to changelog.com's codebase
• An introduction to Render, a zero DevOps cloud platform
• Meta costs feature and its potential benefits
• The Beam ecosystem (Erlang and Elixir) has its own virtual machine and benefits from Erlang technology
• The speaker writes in Elixir, not Erlang, but is invested in the Beam ecosystem
• Concurrency and parallelism are built-in features of the Beam that make it easy to use
• Resiliency is also a key feature, allowing components to fail without affecting the entire system
• The speaker prefers dynamic languages over typed ones, citing ease of development as a benefit
• The speaker discusses the challenges of shipping a lightweight application with minimal dependencies.
• OpenSSL is mentioned as a tricky dependency to manage.
• The conversation turns to on-prem deployments and the use of Docker to set up infrastructure.
• The speaker explains their plan to provide a Docker Compose file, credentials, and let someone else set up the database (Postgres) using Docker.
• Discussion around configuration management, especially with Postgres, including versioning, SSL enabling, and tuning.
• The speaker suggests shipping a binary or executable for simple use cases, but notes that this is not feasible for more complex scenarios like on-prem deployments.
• Stateless systems are mentioned as an alternative to stateful ones, where no data needs to be moved with the service.
• The speaker shares their own experience with building stateless systems and using SQLite for simpler operational requirements.
• A project called Lightstream is mentioned as a solution for replicating SQLite databases and ensuring high availability.
• Discussing the use of SQLite in small-scale SaaS applications
• Mention of Lightstream and its author Ben Johnson (also known as Ben B. Johnson) and his experience with database systems
• Importance of simplicity and effectiveness over complexity in software development
• Discussion on adapting to existing infrastructure for clients, including using SQLite if necessary
• Amnesia and Beam ecosystems, their challenges, and limitations at scale
• Example of WhatsApp's use of Amnesia for metadata storage, but not for heavy writes or reads
• Mention of RabbitMQ as a project that has issues with Amnesia at scale
• Explanation of Amnesia's design limitations and its suitability for tightly coupled machines in telecom applications
• Replicating Postgres and its complexities
• Concerns of using CockroachDB vs Postgres
• Kubernetes as an abstraction layer simplifying everything, but still requiring attention to details
• Choosing PostgreSQL over SQLite for a recent project due to concerns about adapter reliability and maintaining support
• Importance of choosing widely supported and documented solutions for maintainability and future-proofing
• Importance of carefulness in choosing technology and architecture
• Value of scalability and reliability in certain situations
• Dangers of "chasing shiny new frameworks" without considering needs
• Need to ask enough questions (e.g. "why") before making decisions
• Lessons learned from past mistakes and successes
• Microservices vs monoliths, importance of choosing wisely
• Kubernetes, potential overcomplication
• Discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of using Kubernetes
• Experiences with other containerization tools, including K3S
• Reasons for choosing Kubernetes, including maturity and managed services offered by Linode
• Challenges in implementing Kubernetes, such as DNS updates, certificate management, and secret storage
• Concerns around automation, monitoring, and scalability
• Managing infrastructure upgrades without worrying about versions
• Current infrastructure setup using Terraform, Ansible, Docker Compose, and Concourse CI
• Considering a control plane to continuously apply configs and improve management
• Evaluating Kubernetes for large-scale deployment and scalability concerns
• Alternative solutions like K3S, GitOps, and proprietary cloud services for file serving and load balancing
• Discussion of a project's database setup, including PostgreSQL and CockroachDB
• Complexity of getting started with Kubernetes and its value proposition
• Comparison between Kubernetes and other frameworks or runtimes, such as Erlang Elixir and the Beam
• Critique of Kubernetes for being over-engineered and trying to solve everything
• Alternative approach to using a more specialized runtime that handles infrastructure concerns
• The speaker suggests that Kubernetes is often used too early in projects and can be overwhelming due to its complexity
• Kubernetes provides simplicity by abstracting away many details, but this abstraction can also obscure understanding of the underlying system
• The speaker notes that Kubernetes is a powerful tool for automating operations, but it requires a significant learning curve
• Comparison is made to other tools like Chef, Ansible, and Heroku, highlighting Kubernetes' unique features and benefits
• The speaker suggests that Kubernetes can make operations simpler, but at the cost of understanding the underlying details
• Abstraction layers are seen as a double-edged sword: providing convenience, but also obscuring knowledge of the system.
• The power of imperative code and its ability to clearly show what is happening in a system
• Criticism of declarative approaches, such as Kubernetes, for adding unnecessary complexity to simple systems
• Importance of understanding the needs and context of different teams (dev and ops) when choosing tools and abstractions
• Need for collaboration and communication between dev and ops teams to create effective solutions
• Benefits of agreeing on abstractions and having a planned approach to problem-solving
[0.08 --> 5.72] Hey, how's it going? I'm your host, Gerhard Lzu, and you're listening to Ship It, a podcast
[5.72 --> 11.64] about getting your best ideas into the world and seeing what happens. We talk about code,
[11.96 --> 18.00] ops, infrastructure, and the people that make it happen. Yes, we focus on the people because
[18.00 --> 24.12] everything else is an implementation detail. Getting a Kubernetes cluster is easy. It can
[24.12 --> 30.82] take as little as 15 seconds with K3S. But the rest of the first steps are not as straightforward.
[31.30 --> 37.72] And do you even need Kubernetes? The fact that everyone is talking about it, and even those
[37.72 --> 43.66] that don't need it, use it, doesn't mean that you should. Coming from an Elixir background,
[44.00 --> 50.40] with many years of helping companies build and run highly concurrent and fault-tolerant applications,
[50.40 --> 57.62] Lars developed a most pragmatic approach to shipping software. Erlang has some great primitives
[57.62 --> 64.02] built-in, including self-contained releases and hot code reloading. And sometimes a monolith running
[64.02 --> 69.92] on a single host with continuous backups and a built-in self-restore capability is everything
[69.92 --> 76.54] that a small team of developers needs. That's right, KISS. As in, keep it simple, Sprout.
[76.54 --> 82.88] Check Lars's blog to understand what I really mean. But after two years of running changelog.com,
[83.06 --> 87.60] a Phoenix monolith on Kubernetes, what do I think? Let's find out.
[88.02 --> 93.76] Big thanks to our partners Fastly, LaunchDarkly, and Linode. Our bandwidth is provided by Fastly,
[94.10 --> 100.22] learn more at fastly.com, feature flags powered by LaunchDarkly.com, and we love Linode.
[100.22 --> 105.20] They keep it fast and simple. Check them out at linode.com forward slash changelog.
[106.54 --> 115.36] This episode of Ship It is brought to you by Render, the zero DevOps cloud that empowers you
[115.36 --> 120.50] to ship faster than your competitors. Here's Anurag Goel, CEO of Render, sharing why developers
[120.50 --> 123.70] choose Render over Heroku and how they're innovating much faster.
[124.06 --> 129.24] A lot of Render customers come to us from Heroku and they tell us Render is what Heroku
[129.24 --> 134.74] could have been. I think it's because we offer a more streamlined approach to hosting modern cloud
[134.74 --> 141.36] applications at a significantly better price point. Applications on Render heal themselves and
[141.36 --> 146.94] scale automatically, giving developers the features and flexibility of something like Kubernetes,
[147.38 --> 153.02] but without any of the complexity. We're always working to bring the latest industry advances
[153.02 --> 158.44] to our platform so your applications can leverage the state of the art in the cloud without you having
[158.44 --> 164.08] to do or learn anything. All right, learn more about how Render compares to Heroku at render.com
[164.08 --> 170.22] slash compare or email changelog at render.com for a personal intro and to ask questions about
[170.22 --> 175.84] the Render platform. Again, that's render.com slash compare or email changelog at render.com.
[175.84 --> 181.42] We are going to send three, two, one.
[195.10 --> 200.48] I'd like to start with a story. I know that you've been helping changelog.com, the code base,