The latest articles on DEV Community by Finley Griffin (@null_griffin). https://dev.to/null_griffin https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4210568%2F345d55d0-d6d3-4945-9ba1-a1c68c4fe5b6.jpg https://dev.to/null_griffin en Finley Griffin Tue, 27 Oct 2026 15:39:34 +0000 https://dev.to/null_griffin/kubernetes-namespace-sprawl-and-how-we-tamed-it-42dj https://dev.to/null_griffin/kubernetes-namespace-sprawl-and-how-we-tamed-it-42dj <p>We had 46 namespaces in a cluster that should have had maybe a dozen. Every team had created a few "temporarily" and nobody deleted them.</p> <p>The cleanup wasn't technical, it was social. What worked:</p> <ol> <li>A naming convention: <code>&lt;team&gt;-&lt;env&gt;-&lt;purpose&gt;</code>.</li> <li>A monthly report of namespaces with zero running pods.</li> <li>Deleting anything that stayed empty for 30 days — announced in advance.</li> </ol> <p>We went from 46 to 14. The cluster got cheaper, but more importantly the RBAC story got simpler. Fewer namespaces means fewer roles to reason about.</p> <p>I'm learning GraphQL on the side because our internal dashboard is moving that way. If you've migrated an admin UI from REST to GraphQL, I'd love to hear what surprised you.</p> kubernetes devops aws