I Advocated for Containers in 2019 — They Rolled It Out in 2022

Back in 2018, I took on a freelance role at a large organization. Together with one other engineer, we were responsible for keeping dozens of short-lived websites up and running — all the underlying infrastructure, coordination with development agencies, and the bridge between internal IT and external infrastructure providers.

The websites themselves were built by agencies. Our job was everything around it: deployments, environments, scaling, stability, and being ready when something broke.

The Setup

At the time, the system ran on a traditional LAMP stack — Apache, PHP, and large autoscaling nodes. Multiple website vhosts lived side-by-side on the same physical servers. If one crashed, it risked taking down others. It worked, but it wasn’t isolated, nor flexible.

I thought there is room for improvement.

I started suggesting: „What if each site ran in its own container? Small, isolated, easily restarted, easily scaled. And what if we transitioned to a Kubernetes-based setup?“

The Reaction

The idea wasn’t rejected — but it was too early.

We were at the bottom of the chain. Most architectural decisions came from centralized IT, and change moved slowly. Some of the stakeholders preferred the familiar stack. Others simply didn’t see the need. And frankly, the incentives to modernize weren’t strong at the time.

So we stayed with Apache. We stayed with full-node scaling. And we kept handling incidents the old way: reviewing logs, identifying which site caused issues, and reacting.

Still, I documented the containerization proposal. I outlined why it mattered — not just for scalability, but for reliability, security, and maintainability.

Then I let it go.

What Changed

By 2022, years after I had left the role full-time, the company began rolling out containers. Kubernetes. CI/CD pipelines. Site isolation.

I wasn’t involved in the rollout. But I smiled when I saw it happen.

Not because it proved me right.
But because it reminded me:
Sometimes, technical clarity doesn’t need immediate confirmation. It just needs time.

What I Took From It

This wasn’t a glamorous project. There were no shiny products, no launch announcements. I wasn’t there to force change. I was there to keep things running, improve what I could, and plant seeds when I had the chance. Some of those seeds took years to grow. But they did.

Final Thought

You don’t always need to win the argument to know you’re on the right path.

Sometimes, your best work is the kind that takes years to be seen — and still holds up when it finally is.