Choosing an approach deliberately.
WHAT TO ESTABLISH
How many applications How often they change How much downtime is acceptable Who operates the infrastructure What expertise exists
WHAT A SINGLE APPLICATION SUGGESTS
Containers on one server, with a proxy.
WHAT SEVERAL APPLICATIONS ON ONE HOST SUGGEST
A compose file, or a platform service.
WHAT SEVERAL HOSTS AND FREQUENT DEPLOYMENT SUGGEST
Orchestration, or a managed platform.
WHAT NO OPERATIONS CAPACITY SUGGESTS
A platform service running containers for you.
WHY THAT IS FREQUENTLY THE RIGHT ANSWER
It provides most of the benefit with none of the cluster.
WHAT TO DECIDE EXPLICITLY
Whether you are buying infrastructure or operating it.
WHAT TO WRITE DOWN
The decision and its reasoning.
WHY
It is revisited constantly, usually by someone who was not there.
WHAT TO PRESERVE WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE
Applications packaged as images, configured externally.
WHY
That is what makes every other choice reversible.
WHAT TO AVOID
Choosing on fashion Choosing for imagined scale Adopting complexity nobody can operate
WHAT TO REVIEW
The decision, when the constraints actually change.
WHAT TO MEASURE
Whether it made deployment easier or harder.
