Sharing infrastructure safely.
WHAT PEOPLE DO
Run development, testing and production in one cluster, separated by namespace.
WHAT THAT PROVIDES
Lower cost One platform to operate
WHAT IT RISKS
A mistake in one affecting another Resource contention Weaker isolation than assumed
WHAT A NAMESPACE PROVIDES
A boundary for names, permissions and quotas.
WHAT IT DOES NOT PROVIDE
Network isolation by default Node isolation Protection from a cluster-wide failure
WHAT TO ADD
Network policies Resource quotas per namespace Separate node pools, where it matters Strict access control
WHAT A QUOTA PREVENTS
One environment consuming everything.
WHAT TO SET
Limits on total resources per namespace.
WHAT TO NEVER SHARE
Production secrets with non-production namespaces.
WHAT TO CONSIDER SERIOUSLY
A separate cluster for production.
WHY
Cluster upgrades, add-on failures and control plane problems affect everything in it.
WHAT THAT COSTS
Another cluster to operate and pay for.
WHAT TO WEIGH
Whether an outage of everything simultaneously is acceptable.
WHAT MOST ORGANISATIONS SETTLE ON
Production separate; everything else together.
