cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10542663

Well to be precise:

  • How does one install it? On a hypervisor? On a regular distro + KVM?
  • Should I go with Proxmox/Debian/some other distro?
  • I already installed Flatcar Linux, is this also suitable?
  • PropaGandalf@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    It’s for getting acquainted with the whole software stack. Also I have enough free time for it :) I’m also very well aware what the difference between a container service and a hypervisor are, I’m just a little overwhelmed by what open stack can do.

    • Starbuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      I used to be a certified OpenStack Administrator and I’ll say that K8s has eaten its lunch in many companies and in mindshare.

      But if you do it, look at triple-o instead of installing from docs.

      • PropaGandalf@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Would you mind explaining why this shift happened? Isn’t OpenStack more capable than any k8 setup?

        • Starbuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          11 months ago

          There is a lot of complexity and overhead involved in either system. But, the benefits of containerizing and using Kubernetes allow you to standardize a lot of other things with your applications. With Kubernetes, you can standardize your central logging, network monitoring, and much more. And from the developers perspective, they usually don’t even want to deal with VMs. You can run something Docker Desktop or Rancher Desktop on the developer system and that allows them to dev against a real, compliant k8s distro. Kubernetes is also explicitly declarative, something that OpenStack was having trouble being.

          So there are two swim lanes, as I see it: places that need to use VMs because they are using commercial software, which may or may not explicitly support OpenStack, and companies trying to support developers in which case the developers probably want a system that affords a faster path to production while meeting compliance requirements. OpenStack offered a path towards that later case, but Kubernetes came in and created an even better path.

          PS: I didn’t really answer your question”capable” question though. Technically, you can run a kubernetes cluster on top of OpenStack, so by definition Kubernetes offers a subset of the capabilities of OpenStack. But, it encapsulates the best subset for deploying and managing modern applications. Go look at some demos of ArgoCD, for example. Go look at Cilium and Tetragon for network and workload monitoring. Look at what Grafana and Loki are doing for logging/monitoring/instrumentation.

          Because OpenStack lets you deploy nearly anything (and believe me, I was slinging OVAs for anything back in the day) you will never get to that level of standardization of workloads that allows you to do those kind of things. By limiting what the platform can do, you can build really robust tooling around the things you need to do.