Civo
announced the result of its research on the use of containers in organisations.
It surveyed 1,000 cloud developers and found that half reported their
organisation use containers now, and 73% of those organisations are using it in
a production environment. However, the research also revealed that complexity
around container orchestration is hindering adoption, with 47% reporting that
this complexity is slowing down their organisation's use of containers.
Container adoption throughout organisations large and
small is accelerating fast as businesses increasingly build and use cloud
native applications. In this high-growth environment, container orchestration
systems, particularly Kubernetes has grown in popularity to become the de facto
way to automate the deployment, scaling and management of containers.
Civo's research revealed several benefits associated with
Kubernetes. Over two-fifths (41%) cited easy scaling as a key advantage,
closely followed by ease of management of containers (35%) and optimising of
resources (13%). Despite these clear benefits, nearly half of respondents (47%)
have never used Kubernetes.
The research also revealed a number of challenges and
frustrations that respondents have encountered whilst using Kubernetes. By far
and away the top challenge of using Kubernetes is the steep learning curve (57%
reported this as their top challenge) and the biggest frustration is the new
terms, concepts and commands that come with adopting Kubernetes. On top of
this, 62% of respondents are frustrated by the time it takes to spin up a
working Kubernetes cluster.
The future of Kubernetes
However, there is help in the form of K3s, a fully
conformant Kubernetes distribution. K3s is designed as a single binary of less
than 40MB that completely implements the Kubernetes API. Due to its low
resource requirements, it's possible to run clusters using servers with just
512MB of RAM. Because it's a compact binary, K3s clusters can spin up in a
fraction of the time it takes to launch a regular Kubernetes cluster. When
asked by Civo, 80% of Kubernetes users are familiar with K3s and already over
half (51%) would consider it for production workloads.
Mark Boost, Co-Founder and CEO at Civo, said: "Our
research makes it clear what many in the industry have suspected for some time:
complexity is a major obstacle in the uptake of Kubernetes. These difficulties
are clearly feeding into broader concerns about a steep learning curve with
Kubernetes, with some businesses potentially put off the cost of upskilling
developer teams.
"At this moment of truth for Kubernetes, new options are
emerging to tackle the challenges highlighted by our research. One such
platform is K3s, a rapidly growing form of Kubernetes distribution offering a
lightweight, simplified way for developers to rapidly start spinning up
clusters. Contrary to popular the belief that K3s is just for Edge computing,
K3s is particularly efficient at handling production workloads, as well as
significantly enhancing the value for organisations."
Darren Shepherd, Chief Architect at SUSE and creator of K3s,
said: "I think K3s has the chance to be the most widely deployed
distribution of Kubernetes."
Boost concludes: "The rise of K3s marks a turning point
in the developer ecosystem, simplifying Kubernetes for developers of all
levels."