This page shows how to view, work in, and delete namespacesAn abstraction used by Kubernetes to support multiple virtual clusters on the same physical cluster. . The page also shows how to use Kubernetes namespaces to subdivide your cluster.
kubectl get namespaces
NAME STATUS AGE
default Active 11d
kube-system Active 11d
kube-public Active 11d
Kubernetes starts with three initial namespaces:
default
The default namespace for objects with no other namespacekube-system
The namespace for objects created by the Kubernetes systemkube-public
This namespace is created automatically and is readable by all users (including those not authenticated). This namespace is mostly reserved for cluster usage, in case that some resources should be visible and readable publicly throughout the whole cluster. The public aspect of this namespace is only a convention, not a requirement.You can also get the summary of a specific namespace using:
kubectl get namespaces <name>
Or you can get detailed information with:
kubectl describe namespaces <name>
Name: default
Labels: <none>
Annotations: <none>
Status: Active
No resource quota.
Resource Limits
Type Resource Min Max Default
---- -------- --- --- ---
Container cpu - - 100m
Note that these details show both resource quota (if present) as well as resource limit ranges.
Resource quota tracks aggregate usage of resources in the Namespace and allows cluster operators to define Hard resource usage limits that a Namespace may consume.
A limit range defines min/max constraints on the amount of resources a single entity can consume in a Namespace.
See Admission control: Limit Range
A namespace can be in one of two phases:
Active
the namespace is in useTerminating
the namespace is being deleted, and can not be used for new objectsSee the design doc for more details.
my-namespace.yaml
with the contents:apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: <insert-namespace-name-here>
Then run:
kubectl create -f ./my-namespace.yaml
Note that the name of your namespace must be a DNS compatible label.
There’s an optional field finalizers
, which allows observables to purge resources whenever the namespace is deleted. Keep in mind that if you specify a nonexistent finalizer, the namespace will be created but will get stuck in the Terminating
state if the user tries to delete it.
More information on finalizers
can be found in the namespace design doc.
kubectl delete namespaces <insert-some-namespace-name>
Warning: This deletes everything under the namespace!
This delete is asynchronous, so for a time you will see the namespace in the Terminating
state.
By default, a Kubernetes cluster will instantiate a default namespace when provisioning the cluster to hold the default set of Pods, Services, and Deployments used by the cluster.
Assuming you have a fresh cluster, you can introspect the available namespace’s by doing the following:
kubectl get namespaces
NAME STATUS AGE
default Active 13m
For this exercise, we will create two additional Kubernetes namespaces to hold our content.
In a scenario where an organization is using a shared Kubernetes cluster for development and production use cases:
The development team would like to maintain a space in the cluster where they can get a view on the list of Pods, Services, and Deployments they use to build and run their application. In this space, Kubernetes resources come and go, and the restrictions on who can or cannot modify resources are relaxed to enable agile development.
The operations team would like to maintain a space in the cluster where they can enforce strict procedures on who can or cannot manipulate the set of Pods, Services, and Deployments that run the production site.
One pattern this organization could follow is to partition the Kubernetes cluster into two namespaces: development
and production
.
Let’s create two new namespaces to hold our work.
Use the file namespace-dev.json
which describes a development
namespace:
admin/namespace-dev.json
|
---|
|
Create the development
namespace using kubectl.
kubectl create -f https://k8s.io/examples/admin/namespace-dev.json
And then let’s create the production
namespace using kubectl.
kubectl create -f https://k8s.io/examples/admin/namespace-prod.json
To be sure things are right, list all of the namespaces in our cluster.
kubectl get namespaces --show-labels
NAME STATUS AGE LABELS
default Active 32m <none>
development Active 29s name=development
production Active 23s name=production
A Kubernetes namespace provides the scope for Pods, Services, and Deployments in the cluster.
Users interacting with one namespace do not see the content in another namespace.
To demonstrate this, let’s spin up a simple Deployment and Pods in the development
namespace.
We first check what is the current context:
kubectl config view
apiVersion: v1
clusters:
- cluster:
certificate-authority-data: REDACTED
server: https://130.211.122.180
name: lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
contexts:
- context:
cluster: lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
user: lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
name: lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
current-context: lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
- name: lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
user:
client-certificate-data: REDACTED
client-key-data: REDACTED
token: 65rZW78y8HbwXXtSXuUw9DbP4FLjHi4b
- name: lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes-basic-auth
user:
password: h5M0FtUUIflBSdI7
username: admin
kubectl config current-context
lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
The next step is to define a context for the kubectl client to work in each namespace. The values of “cluster” and “user” fields are copied from the current context.
kubectl config set-context dev --namespace=development --cluster=lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes --user=lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
kubectl config set-context prod --namespace=production --cluster=lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes --user=lithe-cocoa-92103_kubernetes
The above commands provided two request contexts you can alternate against depending on what namespace you wish to work against.
Let’s switch to operate in the development
namespace.
kubectl config use-context dev
You can verify your current context by doing the following:
kubectl config current-context
dev
At this point, all requests we make to the Kubernetes cluster from the command line are scoped to the development
namespace.
Let’s create some contents.
kubectl run snowflake --image=kubernetes/serve_hostname --replicas=2
We have just created a deployment whose replica size is 2 that is running the pod called snowflake
with a basic container that just serves the hostname.
Note that kubectl run
creates deployments only on Kubernetes cluster >= v1.2. If you are running older versions, it creates replication controllers instead.
If you want to obtain the old behavior, use --generator=run/v1
to create replication controllers. See kubectl run
for more details.
kubectl get deployment
NAME DESIRED CURRENT UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
snowflake 2 2 2 2 2m
kubectl get pods -l run=snowflake
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
snowflake-3968820950-9dgr8 1/1 Running 0 2m
snowflake-3968820950-vgc4n 1/1 Running 0 2m
And this is great, developers are able to do what they want, and they do not have to worry about affecting content in the production
namespace.
Let’s switch to the production
namespace and show how resources in one namespace are hidden from the other.
kubectl config use-context prod
The production
namespace should be empty, and the following commands should return nothing.
kubectl get deployment
kubectl get pods
Production likes to run cattle, so let’s create some cattle pods.
kubectl run cattle --image=kubernetes/serve_hostname --replicas=5
kubectl get deployment
NAME DESIRED CURRENT UP-TO-DATE AVAILABLE AGE
cattle 5 5 5 5 10s
kubectl get pods -l run=cattle
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
cattle-2263376956-41xy6 1/1 Running 0 34s
cattle-2263376956-kw466 1/1 Running 0 34s
cattle-2263376956-n4v97 1/1 Running 0 34s
cattle-2263376956-p5p3i 1/1 Running 0 34s
cattle-2263376956-sxpth 1/1 Running 0 34s
At this point, it should be clear that the resources users create in one namespace are hidden from the other namespace.
As the policy support in Kubernetes evolves, we will extend this scenario to show how you can provide different authorization rules for each namespace.
A single cluster should be able to satisfy the needs of multiple users or groups of users (henceforth a ‘user community’).
Kubernetes namespaces help different projects, teams, or customers to share a Kubernetes cluster.
It does this by providing the following:
Use of multiple namespaces is optional.
Each user community wants to be able to work in isolation from other communities.
Each user community has its own:
A cluster operator may create a Namespace for each unique user community.
The Namespace provides a unique scope for:
Use cases include:
When you create a Service, it creates a corresponding DNS entry.
This entry is of the form <service-name>.<namespace-name>.svc.cluster.local
, which means
that if a container just uses <service-name>
it will resolve to the service which
is local to a namespace. This is useful for using the same configuration across
multiple namespaces such as Development, Staging and Production. If you want to reach
across namespaces, you need to use the fully qualified domain name (FQDN).
Was this page helpful?
Thanks for the feedback. If you have a specific, answerable question about how to use Kubernetes, ask it on Stack Overflow. Open an issue in the GitHub repo if you want to report a problem or suggest an improvement.