Shared Namespace

The Shared Namespace runs the complete application. Overlay Namespaces fall back to it for every service they don't deploy, so it should run the latest version of every service.

Preview Environment Redeployed on Every Merge

The recommended setup is a global Preview Environment that your CI redeploys on every merge to the main branch. Preview Environments can be deployed from any CI tool. For example, with GitHub Actions, use the okteto/deploy-preview action:

name: Deploy the Shared Namespace
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: okteto/context@latest
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.OKTETO_TOKEN }}
          url: ${{ secrets.OKTETO_CONTEXT }}
      - uses: okteto/deploy-preview@latest
        with:
          name: staging

Make the Shared Namespace persistent, so it never goes to sleep.

Namespace Outside Okteto

The Shared Namespace can also be a namespace that Okteto doesn't manage, such as an existing staging namespace with production-like data. It must run in the same cluster as the Overlay Namespaces: Divert routes requests between namespaces of the same cluster, so a Shared Namespace in another cluster isn't supported. Your Admin configures access to it, as described in Shared Namespaces Outside Okteto.