Multi-Tenancy on EKS: Isolating Workloads Using Namespaces & RBAC

Learn how to implement multi-tenancy on AWS EKS using Kubernetes Namespaces and RBAC. Explore workload isolation strategies, security best practices, and real-world examples.

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Introduction

As organizations scale their Kubernetes environments, they often need to support multiple teams, applications, or customers within the same Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) cluster. Multi-tenancy enables efficient resource sharing while ensuring security and isolation between workloads.

This blog will explore:
✅ What is multi-tenancy in EKS, and why is it important?
✅ How Kubernetes Namespaces help isolate workloads
✅ Using Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) to restrict user permissions
✅ Best practices for securing multi-tenant workloads
✅ Real-world examples of multi-tenancy implementation in EKS

By implementing Namespaces and RBAC, organizations can achieve strong workload isolation without needing separate clusters.

What is Multi-Tenancy in Kubernetes?

Multi-tenancy in Kubernetes allows multiple teams, departments, or customers to share the same EKS cluster securely and efficiently.

Types of Multi-Tenancy

🔹 Soft Multi-Tenancy — Workloads share cluster-wide resources but are logically isolated using Namespaces & RBAC.
🔹 Hard Multi-Tenancy — Stronger isolation using separate clusters, VPCs, or dedicated node pools.

EKS supports soft multi-tenancy by leveraging Namespaces, RBAC, and Network Policies.

Using Kubernetes Namespaces for Multi-Tenancy

What Are Kubernetes Namespaces?

Namespaces partition a Kubernetes cluster into logical groups, allowing teams to operate independently while sharing cluster resources.

Example: Creating Namespaces for Multi-Tenant Workloads

kubectl create namespace dev-team
kubectl…