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🧭 Kubernetes Namespaces & Quotas

Namespaces help you organize and isolate Kubernetes resources logically within a cluster. They are especially useful for multi-team, multi-project, or multi-environment setups.

✅ Why Use Namespaces?

Namespaces allow you to:

  • Separate dev/stage/prod environments
  • Avoid resource name collisions
  • Apply role-based access controls (RBAC)
  • Enforce resource usage limits per group or team

Think of a namespace as a "folder" for your resources.

📦 Default Namespaces

Namespace Purpose
default Default working space for resources
kube-system Kubernetes control plane components
kube-public Readable by all users (for bootstrap info)
kube-node-lease Heartbeat tracking for nodes

🔧 Common Namespace Commands

List all namespaces

kubectl get namespaces

Create a namespace

kubectl create namespace dev-ns

Delete a namespace

kubectl delete namespace dev-ns

Get resources in a namespace

kubectl get pods -n dev-ns
kubectl get all -n prod

Change current context namespace

kubectl config set-context --current --namespace=dev

🎯 Best Practices

  • Avoid using the default namespace for production workloads
  • Use naming conventions like team-name-env (e.g., payments-prod)
  • Group related workloads, quotas, and policies under one namespace

🧮 Resource Quotas

A ResourceQuota is used to limit the aggregate resource consumption (CPU, memory, object count) within a namespace.

✅ Why Use ResourceQuotas?

  • Prevent teams from over-consuming shared resources
  • Enforce fair usage across namespaces
  • Encourage teams to define requests and limits in Pod specs

📄 Example ResourceQuota YAML

apiVersion: v1
kind: ResourceQuota
metadata:
  name: compute-quota
  namespace: dev-ns
spec:
  hard:
    pods: "10"
    requests.cpu: "4"
    requests.memory: 5Gi
    limits.cpu: "10"
    limits.memory: 10Gi

Apply the quota

kubectl apply -f compute-quota.yaml

📊 How It Works

  • Quotas are applied per namespace
  • Usage is tracked by summing requests/limits across all resources in that namespace
  • If usage exceeds the quota, new resources will be rejected

Quotas do not limit nodes — only what's consumed inside the namespace

🔍 View ResourceQuota Usage

kubectl describe quota compute-quota -n dev-ns

🌐 Service DNS & Namespaces

Services can be reached using Kubernetes DNS:

Same namespace:

db-service

Different namespace:

db-service.marketing.svc.cluster.local

✅ Summary

Feature Use Case
Namespace Isolate resources, teams, environments
ResourceQuota Enforce CPU/memory/object limits
DNS Resolution Resolve services within/across namespaces

Namespaces give structure to your cluster and help teams share it responsibly. Quotas protect fairness and stability.