Survey: Understand how Kubernetes users use namespaces
What’s this issue all about?
Our Kubernetes integration allows you to create a gitlab-managed cluster. This means that GitLab will create the namespace and service accounts needed for your cluster, just in time. This happens when a pipeline is ran.
Up until this point, we have created one namespace for each project. With https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/52494, we will be creating a namespace per environment. We have chosen this path based on best practices and conversations with existing customers. However, further research would help us to solidify this path forward and ensure we are not creating future UX or tech debt.
There is an option for users to not take advantage of the GitLab-managed cluster. This means they would be responsible for creating their own namespaces and service accounts for their cluster. This option would allow users to create a namespace per project, if they wished.
What questions are you trying to answer?
We want to further refine whether organizations are using a single namespace for an entire project, or multiple namespaces for separating different test environments (staging, review apps, etc.).
Ultimately, we want to ensure that not providing the option to have a GitLab-managed cluster be either A) namespace per environment or B) namespace per project will not cause headaches down the road. We want to be opinionated about the default option (namespace per environment) while also being cognizant of user needs and expectations.
What assumptions do you have?
- Namespaces per environment is best practice. It is also advocated for by the Kubernetes folks
- Users who don't want namespaces per environment will be able to accomplish this by using an unmanaged cluster
What decisions will you make based on the research findings?
The research will inform which options we present the user with during the creation of their cluster.
What's the latest milestone that the research will still be useful to you?
Survey draft
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GLQzLcikhWAhGeVe3yKiI6y7DnSX85x6y6mbl9Ukpcg/edit?usp=sharing