Table of contents
1.
Introduction
2.
What is Multi Tenancy?
3.
Advantages of Multi Tenancy
4.
Disadvantages of Multi Tenancy
5.
Importance of Multi Tenancy
6.
Multi Tenancy Applications
7.
FAQs
8.
Key Takeaways
Last Updated: Mar 27, 2024

Multi Tenancy

Author Gaurav joshi
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Introduction

Today, we will learn a critical concept of cloud computing, i.e., Multi Tenancy. Without which cloud computing would be far less practical than it is now. Before going into details of Multi Tenancy, let us first understand cloud computing. In general terms, cloud computing refers to storing and accessing data or computing services on the internet. Data and applications are centralized in a cloud instead of being stored or located in individual client devices. These data and applications are hosted by a remote server across various data centers and are accessible over the internet. Multi Tenancy is one of the essential components of cloud computing. It makes cloud computing cost-effective and highly scalable. Not only that, it makes better use of resources. Let's understand Multi Tenancy in detail in the next section.

What is Multi Tenancy?

Multi Tenancy in cloud computing refers to when multiple customers of a cloud vendor are served by a single software instance, i.e., using the same computer resources. It is a software architecture where a single software instance serves multiple user groups. In modern cloud computing, the single software instance is taken to broad meaning and refers to cloud infrastructure. Even though multiple customers share the same computer resources, they are unaware of each other, and their respective data is stored separately. Multi Tenancy is one of the critical components of cloud computing, which makes cloud computing far more practical.

Let us go through our daily life examples to understand Multi Tenancy in detail. We all have a bank account in our local bank. The banking system works somewhat similar to Multi Tenancy architecture in cloud computing. Like in your local bank, there are multiple account holders or customers. All of these customers deposit their savings into the bank. Even though their assets are in the same bank, they are stored separately, and every account holder has access to only their deposit. Customers of the bank do not interact with each other and don't have access to other customers' deposits. They are not even aware of other customers. 

In the next section, we will learn about the advantages and disadvantages of Multi Tenancy.

Advantages of Multi Tenancy

  1. Multi Tenancy makes cloud computing cost-effective. Just like sharing a cab is more pocket friendly to you than riding alone, the same way sharing cloud resources makes it less expensive. A fraction of the labour cost, staff, onboarding new tenants, maintenance and development is passed on to the customer, which is shared among the tenants. Most of it is handled by the cloud hosts, and as a result, customers end up paying only for their services and not for anything else.
  2. Multi Tenancy is secure and offers privacy. Though it's not a hidden truth that single-tenants have much more security, Multi Tenancy is good in threat detection and keeping the tenant's resources separated.
  3. Multi Tenancy is easily scalable. Adding on its advantage of being cost-effective, Multi Tenancy helps a growing business add and remove resources based on its requirements. This flexibility proves to be much beneficial for businesses growing unpredictably.
  4. Providing single and separate physical services to every user is difficult for a vendor Multi Tenancy to help us save vendor costs. It better uses the infrastructure by sharing the resources with multiple customers rather than limiting it to a single user.
  5. Multi Tenancy architecture proves to be maintenance-free for the customer. Apart from not paying for the monitoring and administrative cost, they don't do the work either. The host handles all these tasks, including updating, upgrading, and maintenance. It's similar to renting an apartment, the tenant pays the rent, and the landlord is responsible for the repairs and maintenance of the apartment.

Disadvantages of Multi Tenancy

  1. The Multi Tenancy architecture of cloud computing poses a security risk. There is a slight chance of third parties accessing your data. This breach could happen intentionally by some hacker groups by exploiting the weakness in the architecture or may be due to some accident like software malfunction or software bugs that expose your data.
  2. The Multi Tenancy architecture of cloud computing is more complicated compared to a single-tenant cloud computing model for a host. It's a complex process.
  3. There could be possible response time issues. Some customers may be consuming excessive CPU cycles and hence draining the CPU, which could slow down processing for every other customer. This issue is also known as the noisy neighbour effect.
  4. Unauthorized access can cause damage to the data.

Importance of Multi Tenancy

Multi Tenancy is one of the essential components of cloud computing. It makes cloud computing cost-effective and highly scalable. Not only that, it makes better use of resources. Multi-tenancy offers quality and consistent cloud access to every user at an affordable price. And hence making it a level playing field for small and mega large organizations. Any up-gradation, feature installation, innovation helps a larger audience in Multi Tenancy. On the other hand, any changes in features serve only one tenant in a single tenant.

Multi Tenancy Applications

Multi Tenancy applications help hosts serve their multiple clients by introducing one single application. Every customer's data is stored separately from one another. Multi Tenancy applications provide the user with some features like 

  • View:- Letting users select the application stylings like User Interface.
  • User and Groups:- Allowing tenants to change customisation to facilitate data access control.
  • Business Rule:- Allowing a tenant to frame their own rules.
  • Data set Composition:-Allowing a tenant to characterize the chosen database schema for application.
     

 Most cloud-based applications are multi-tenant, e.g. Netflix, Docker, Office 365, Zoho, WordPress etc.

FAQs

  1. What is Multi Tenancy?
    Multi Tenancy in cloud computing refers to when a single software instance serves multiple customers of a cloud vendor. It is a software architecture where a single software instance serves multiple user groups. Even though multiple customers share the same computer resources, they are unaware of each other, and their respective data is stored separately.
     
  2. How does Multi Tenancy prove beneficial to the host?
    Providing single and separate physical services to every user is difficult for a vendor Multi Tenancy to help us save vendor costs. It better uses the infrastructure by sharing the resources with multiple customers rather than limiting it to a single user.
     
  3. How may Multi Tenancy possess a response time issue?
    There could be possible response time issues. Some customers may be consuming excessive CPU cycles and hence draining the CPU, which could slow down processing for every other customer.

Key Takeaways

In this article, we have extensively discussed Multi Tenancy architecture in cloud computing. We have also explained the advantages, disadvantages, applications and importance of Multi Tenancy.

I hope this article must have helped you improve your learning about cloud computing. To discover more about such content and practice some quality questions required to excel in your preparations, please visit our Guided Path in  Coding Ninjas Studio.To become more confident in data structures and algorithms, try out DS and Algo Course. Till then, all the best for your future adventure and Happy Coding.

 

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