I’m glad you moved away from AWS, I wouldn’t even consider going for VM hosting and would’ve gone dedicated from the get go (or even self-hosting on a colo / using a good fiber connection at home, but I guess I live in a super privileged country when it comes to ISPs).
Isn’t k8s a bit overkill tho? Front-loaded caching seems to make sense, but a single 10gbit dedi could probably resolve the issue easier and simpler, couldn’t it?