vcluster VS hierarchical-namespaces

Compare vcluster vs hierarchical-namespaces and see what are their differences.

vcluster

vCluster - Create fully functional virtual Kubernetes clusters - Each vcluster runs inside a namespace of the underlying k8s cluster. It's cheaper than creating separate full-blown clusters and it offers better multi-tenancy and isolation than regular namespaces. (by loft-sh)

hierarchical-namespaces

Home of the Hierarchical Namespace Controller (HNC). Adds hierarchical policies and delegated creation to Kubernetes namespaces for improved in-cluster multitenancy. (by kubernetes-sigs)
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vcluster hierarchical-namespaces
70 8
5,511 578
10.9% 6.6%
9.7 7.0
3 days ago about 24 hours ago
Go Go
Apache License 2.0 Apache License 2.0
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

vcluster

Posts with mentions or reviews of vcluster. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-11-27.

hierarchical-namespaces

Posts with mentions or reviews of hierarchical-namespaces. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-11-27.
  • Efficient Cluster Management with Kubernetes’ Hierarchical Namespaces
    1 project | dev.to | 23 Mar 2024
    HNC_VERSION=v1.1.0 HNC_VARIANT=default kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/hierarchical-namespaces/releases/latest/download/hnc-manager.yaml
  • Amazon EC2 Enhances Defense in Depth with Default IMDSv2
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 27 Nov 2023
    Kubernetes has a lot of limitations from a multi tenancy perspective.

    It's functional, but I think it's not as polished as the rest of Kubernetes which is why Kubernetes has a multi tenancy SIG that spawned the hierarchical namespace controller (https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/hierarchical-namespaces) and virtual clusters (https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/cluster-api-provider-nest...)

  • Automatically deploy objects after namespace creation
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 31 May 2023
    Kyverno's a great option. Depending on the usecase you might want to consider https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/hierarchical-namespaces as well (disclaimer: I'm the original author) - it's good if groups of related namespaces need related objects.
  • Multitenancy with Hierarchical namespaces
    1 project | dev.to | 18 Jun 2022
    ❯ HNC_VERSION=v1.0.0 ❯ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/hierarchical-namespaces/releases/download/${HNC_VERSION}/default.yaml namespace/hnc-system created customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/hierarchyconfigurations.hnc.x-k8s.io created customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/hncconfigurations.hnc.x-k8s.io created customresourcedefinition.apiextensions.k8s.io/subnamespaceanchors.hnc.x-k8s.io created role.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/hnc-leader-election-role created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/hnc-admin-role created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/hnc-manager-role created clusterrole.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/hnc-proxy-role created rolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/hnc-leader-election-rolebinding created clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/hnc-manager-rolebinding created clusterrolebinding.rbac.authorization.k8s.io/hnc-proxy-rolebinding created secret/hnc-webhook-server-cert created service/hnc-controller-manager-metrics-service created service/hnc-webhook-service created deployment.apps/hnc-controller-manager created mutatingwebhookconfiguration.admissionregistration.k8s.io/hnc-mutating-webhook-configuration created validatingwebhookconfiguration.admissionregistration.k8s.io/hnc-validating-webhook-configuration created # Install helper plugin ❯ kubectl krew install hns
  • Is it anti-pattern to have multiple environments under a single namespace?
    3 projects | /r/kubernetes | 13 Apr 2022
    I would say it’s an anti-pattern since using a namespace for multiple environments will be a pain. Not sure what you mean by CRDs though. There is an addon that gives you namespace hierarchies. I.e. each team gets a namespace and they can have sub-namespaces for environments. Check it out: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/hierarchical-namespaces
  • Ask r/kubernetes: What are you working on this week?
    1 project | /r/kubernetes | 2 Feb 2022
    Looking into the Hierarchical Namespace Controller to see if it can simplify our heavily multi-tenanted clusters. So far so good!
  • RBAC and limited namespace access
    2 projects | /r/kubernetes | 19 Dec 2021
    HNC is designed for these kinds of scenarios: https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/hierarchical-namespaces
  • Introduction to Multi-Tenancy in Kubernetes
    3 projects | dev.to | 9 Dec 2021
    Project HNC

What are some alternatives?

When comparing vcluster and hierarchical-namespaces you can also consider the following projects:

capsule - Multi-tenancy and policy-based framework for Kubernetes.

kind - Kubernetes IN Docker - local clusters for testing Kubernetes

rbac-manager - A Kubernetes operator that simplifies the management of Role Bindings and Service Accounts.

kiosk - kiosk 🏢 Multi-Tenancy Extension For Kubernetes - Secure Cluster Sharing & Self-Service Namespace Provisioning

namespace-configuration-operator - The namespace-configuration-operator helps keeping configurations related to Users, Groups and Namespaces aligned with one of more policies specified as a CRs

cluster-api-provider-nested - Cluster API Provider for Nested Clusters

k3s - Lightweight Kubernetes

multi-tenancy - A working place for multi-tenancy related proposals and prototypes.

kubeplus - Kubernetes Operator to create Multi-Instance Multi-tenancy (SaaS) from Helm charts

secrets-store-csi-driver - Secrets Store CSI driver for Kubernetes secrets - Integrates secrets stores with Kubernetes via a CSI volume.