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Comment by user15128 | Hacker News Reader

in order to test your app in prod-like env you need to run prod-like env locally. ie. a k8s-cluster that is close enough to prod. for that you will have to at least simulate multi-node-setup and run all cluster-addons like in production.

i am excited about this move from docker but i don't think it will solve all the problems. i think once you have a bigger team it is worthwhile to run a second k8s-cluster besides prod where people can just test things on it. otherwise it is actually not that hard to run a local k8s-cluster with vagrant, not sure how docker wants to top that - i think there is no need to top vagrant.

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I believe when you say "simulating multi-node setup and addons" - you're seeing it from an operations perspective. Thing is, those concerns don't need to be repeated for every single application. When a consumer says "test", they mean testing functionality. Not testing operations like network I/O bandwidth, sysctl parameters, rebalancing, etc. The expectation is that, operational folks (kubernetes integration tests, ops integration tests, GKE tests, etc) already have tested and verified all of that.

This is not like ops vs dev. When you use a library or framework (say, spring) - you don't test whether HTTP MIME Types are working correctly in spring. You assume the library already has all that tested and covered, and as a consumer, you write tests for what you code. The library's code (and tests) are abstracted from you. This is similar, except for operational stuff. In fact, there is no major difference between them. Its just layering and separation of concerns.

There is no such thing as 100% prod except prod. Even for rocket launches. 90+% is good enough for majority of cases, and is already on the higher side.

Not necessarily, we have been using k8s for a while now where I work and what we've been doing is running a simple minikube setup locally, with the production add-ons (DNS, nginx ingress controllers, etc.) and circumventing what is AWS-related.

It's been working quite well, no need for multi-node-setup so far that I'm aware of.

PV volume support and failover has proven to not work very well on single nodes. Otherwise I agree.

It will be possible to run all your add-ons in the local setup, including networking. Multi-node is essential for some use-case, but arguably is not critical for most people, yet it is coming in the future.

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