Is Kubernetes really overcomplicated, though? Say you wanted to do a release of a new version of your app. You'd probably boot up a VM for the new version, provision it an IP, copy your code to it, and check if it's healthy. Then you'd edit your load balancer configuration to send traffic to that new IP, and drain traffic from the old IP. Then you'd shut the old instance down.
That's basically what a Deployment in Kubernetes would do; create a Pod to provision compute resources and an IP, pull a container to copy your code into the environment, run a health check to see if that all went OK, and then update the Service's Endpoints to start sending it traffic. Then it would drain the old Pod in a reverse of starting a new one, perhaps running your configured cleanup steps along the way.
The difference between the example and what Kubernetes does is that Kubernetes is a computer program that can do this thousands of times for you without really making you think about getting the details right every time. Doesn't seem overly complicated to me. A lot of stuff? Sure. But it's pretty close to the right level of complexity. (Some may argue that this is even too simple. What about blue/green testing? What about canaries? When do my database migrations run? Kubernetes has no answer, and if it did, it certainly wouldn't make it simpler. Perhaps the real problem is that Kubernetes isn't complicated enough!)
Anyway, "that's Kubernetes as fuck" is kind of a good meme. I'll give you that. But a deep understanding usually makes memes less amusing.
That's basically what a Deployment in Kubernetes would do; create a Pod to provision compute resources and an IP, pull a container to copy your code into the environment, run a health check to see if that all went OK, and then update the Service's Endpoints to start sending it traffic. Then it would drain the old Pod in a reverse of starting a new one, perhaps running your configured cleanup steps along the way.
The difference between the example and what Kubernetes does is that Kubernetes is a computer program that can do this thousands of times for you without really making you think about getting the details right every time. Doesn't seem overly complicated to me. A lot of stuff? Sure. But it's pretty close to the right level of complexity. (Some may argue that this is even too simple. What about blue/green testing? What about canaries? When do my database migrations run? Kubernetes has no answer, and if it did, it certainly wouldn't make it simpler. Perhaps the real problem is that Kubernetes isn't complicated enough!)
Anyway, "that's Kubernetes as fuck" is kind of a good meme. I'll give you that. But a deep understanding usually makes memes less amusing.