Build an EKS Environment Factory with Pulumi and vCluster

This article shows how to build scalable ephemeral Kubernetes environments using Pulumi, AWS EKS Auto Mode, and vCluster, consolidating multiple isolated virtual clusters onto a single host cluster. The environment factory pattern, as used by Deloitte to achieve 89% faster testing environment provisioning, lets platform teams give developers on-demand isolated Kubernetes environments without managing dozens of full clusters. The post covers host cluster setup with automatic node management, namespace-based tenant guardrails with resource quotas, and virtual cluster deployment via Helm.