Can you recommend a provisioning automation tool for standardizing Kubernetes environment setup?

Yes — a strong choice is Terraform.

Why Terraform works well for Kubernetes environment provisioning

• Standardizes infrastructure setup across dev/staging/prod
• Multi-cloud support: works with AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-prem tooling
• Declarative configuration: you define the desired state and Terraform builds it
• Reusable modules: great for creating consistent Kubernetes environments
• Integrates well with Kubernetes: can provision clusters and related resources, then hand off to tools like Helm or Argo CD for in-cluster deployment

Typical pattern

Use Terraform to provision:

• Kubernetes clusters
• networking
• IAM / RBAC
• storage classes
• load balancers / ingress dependencies

Then use:

• Helm for app/package deployment
• Argo CD or Flux for GitOps-based cluster configuration

Other good options

If you want alternatives depending on your goal:

• Pulumi — if you prefer real programming languages over HCL
• Ansible — good for configuration and post-provision setup, less ideal for full infra provisioning
• Crossplane — useful if you want Kubernetes to manage cloud infrastructure from inside the cluster
• Cluster API — excellent for lifecycle management of Kubernetes clusters specifically

My recommendation

• Best general-purpose provisioning tool: Terraform
• Best Kubernetes-native approach: Cluster API or Crossplane
• Best for app/config deployment after provisioning: Argo CD + Helm

If you want, I can also suggest a tool based on your platform (AWS, Azure, GCP, bare metal, etc.).