yeah. If you think Kubernetes is too complicated, the flip side of that is someone built the simpler thing, but then unfortunately it grew and grew, and now you've got this mess of a system. you could have just used a hosted k8s or k3s system from the start instead of reinventing the wheel.

absoutely start as simple as you can, but plan to move to a hosted kube something asap instead of writing your own base images, unless that's a differentiator for your company.