The practical decision.
WHAT A MANAGED CONTAINER SERVICE IS
You supply an image; the provider runs it, scales it and routes to it.
WHAT IT REMOVES
A cluster to upgrade Nodes to patch Add-ons to maintain Scheduling to reason about
WHAT IT CONSTRAINS
Networking options Background and scheduled work, sometimes Long-running connections, sometimes Which regions are available
WHAT TO CHECK BEFORE COMMITTING
Whether it supports what your application actually does.
WHAT COMMONLY DOES NOT FIT
Persistent connections Very long requests Workloads needing local state
WHAT A CLUSTER PROVIDES
Full control, and one platform for everything.
WHAT IT DEMANDS
Someone who can operate and diagnose it.
WHAT THE HONEST QUESTION IS
Do you have that person, and will you still have them next year?
WHAT TO DO IF THE ANSWER IS NO
Use the managed service.
WHAT TO PRESERVE EITHER WAY
Images and externalised configuration.
WHY
Moving between them is then a deployment change, not a rewrite.
WHAT TO AVOID
Choosing a cluster for one application Choosing a managed service for something it cannot run
WHAT TO REVISIT
The choice, as the number of services grows.
