A script that installs some dependencies on an Ubuntu vm. A script that rsyncs the build artifact to the machine. The script can drain connections and restart the service using the new build, then onto the next VM. The cloud load balancer points at those VMs and has a health check. It's very simple. Nothing fancy.

Our small company uses this setup. We migrated from GCP to AWS when our free GCP credits from YC ran out and then we used our free AWS credits. That migration took me about a day of rejiggering scripts and another of stumbling around in the horrible AWS UI and API. Still seems far, far easier than paying the kubernetes tax.

I guess the cloud load balancer is the most custom part. Do you use the alb from aws?