Lakshmi Narasimhan
tag 9 posts

#Kubernetes

When DIY Beats Managed Kubernetes

When I first started working with Kubernetes, I immediately gravitated toward managed offerings like EKS, GKE, and AKS. The promise was compelling: let AWS/Google/Azure handle the control plane while you focus on your applications. Fast forward a few years, and I’ve come to a somewhat contrarian position—for many teams, especially those with some ops capability, running K3s on virtual machines often makes more sense than using managed Kubernetes. Let me explain why, and the important caveats to make this approach work.