What is the best way to establish separate environments for different teams on Google Kubernetes Engine while adhering to isolation?

Creating separate environments for different teams on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) while ensuring isolation is best achieved by establishing Development and Production clusters in separate projects, accompanied by the use of Kubernetes namespaces. This method provides a robust level of isolation at both the project and the cluster levels.

When separate GKE clusters are set up in distinct projects, each cluster operates independently. This means that resources such as compute instances, network configurations, and quotas are managed separately, significantly reducing the risk of interference between teams and environments. Using separate projects also allows easier implementation of policies, billing, and visibility controls tailored to different teams' needs.

Kubernetes namespaces further enhance this separation by allowing logical division within the clusters, which helps maintain resource organization and can enforce resource quotas within each environment. This structure promotes security and simplifies access controls, as each team can be granted permissions relevant only to their specific namespace.

Establishing multiple clusters for Dev and Prod in separate projects addresses concerns regarding environments’ isolation effectively—practices like accidental deployments from one environment to another or resource contention are significantly mitigated compared to single-cluster setups.