Why Running Multiple Clusters for Internal Teams is a Waste

When we adopt Kubernetes and start scaling across teams, a familiar pattern usually shows up: each team asks for their own cluster.

At first, it sounds reasonable - give every team full control, ensure isolation, and avoid stepping on each other’s toes. But over time, this approach turns out to be inefficient, costly, and tough to manage.

The Hidden Costs of Cluster Sprawl

Running a cluster isn’t free. Each new Kubernetes cluster adds overhead:

• Infrastructure Costs: Each cluster needs its own control plane, networking, and compute nodes - even if they’re underutilized.

• Operational Complexity: More clusters mean more upgrades, monitoring setups, logging pipelines, backups, and integrations to manage.

• Inconsistent Environments: It gets harder to enforce consistent security, tooling, and policies across the board.

• Fragmented Visibility: We lose a centralized view of workloads, resource usage, and compliance.

What started as a simple solution quickly became a bottleneck to scale.

A Better Way: Multi-Tenancy with One Cluster

Instead of spinning up multiple clusters, we can hit the same goals - isolation, autonomy, scalability - all within a single cluster by following multi-tenancy best practices.

Enter Stakater Multi-Tenant Operator (MTO): a Kubernetes-native operator designed to create isolated, policy-enforced environments for internal teams - all inside one shared cluster.

With MTO, our platform team can:

• Create secure, isolated namespaces for each team

• Enforce RBAC, NetworkPolicies, ResourceQuotas, and Pod Security

• Offer a consistent developer experience with pre-configured toolsets

• Onboard teams in minutes using simple CRDs

• Keep centralized control while enabling team-level autonomy

Real-World Analogy

Running one cluster per team is like giving every employee their own building just to work in a private office. It’s expensive, inefficient, and tough to manage.

With MTO, it’s more like giving each team a locked office in a shared building. Everyone gets privacy and security - while sharing the building’s infrastructure.

The Business Case

• Cut Infrastructure Spend: Fewer clusters mean lower cloud costs.

• Reduce Operational Load: Just one cluster to upgrade, secure, and monitor.

• Speed Up Delivery: Teams get isolated, pre-configured environments fast.

• Increase Standardization: It’s easier to apply policies and governance consistently.

When to Use Multiple Clusters

There are definitely valid reasons to run more than one cluster:

• Different geographic regions or regulatory zones

• Separating environments (dev, staging, prod)

• M&A activity or business unit silos

But spinning up a cluster for every internal team? That’s rarely the right move.

Final Thoughts

Cluster sprawl isn’t a badge of Kubernetes maturity - it’s usually a sign of growing pains. With the right multi-tenancy strategy, we can scale our Kubernetes usage without the cost and complexity of managing a fleet of clusters.

Start with one cluster. Let MTO make it feel like many.