Multi-Tenancy in Cloud Computing

Dec 19,2022 by Meghali Gupta
multi tenancy in cloud computing
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What is Multi Tenancy in Cloud Computing

In cloud computing, multi-tenancy is a model where a single instance of a software application or infrastructure serves multiple users or “tenants.” Logically, it appears as if each user has their own dedicated system, but in reality, they share underlying resources like servers, databases, or storage. This approach optimizes resource utilization and cost-effectiveness while maintaining security, data isolation, and customization for each tenant. Logs in a multi-tenancy environment typically capture information related to user activities, system events, and operational data, ensuring traceability and visibility while keeping data segregated for each tenant’s privacy and security.

Multitenancy can be understood by picturing how banking operates. Even though their assets are housed in the exact location, multiple persons can put their money in the same bank and keep them fully distinct. The bank’s clients do not communicate, have access to one another’s funds, or even know one another exists.

Multitenancy in the context of cloud computing refers to the simultaneous use of computing resources by numerous clients of a cloud vendor. Although cloud customers share resources, they are unaware of one another, and their data is kept completely separate. Cloud computing relies heavily on multitenancy; without it, cloud services would be much less useful.

Key aspects of multi-tenancy in cloud computing:

Aspect Description
Definition Model where a single instance of software or infrastructure serves multiple users (tenants) concurrently.
Resource Sharing Shared use of underlying resources like servers, databases, storage, and networking across multiple tenants.
Isolation Ensures logical and often physical separation of data and operations, maintaining privacy and security.
Customization Enables customization and configuration for each tenant’s specific requirements within a shared environment.
Efficiency Optimizes resource utilization, reducing costs by allowing resources to be shared among multiple tenants.
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Even though their assets are housed in the exact location, multiple persons can put their money in the same bank and keep them fully distinct. The bank’s clients do not communicate, have access to one another’s funds, or even know one another exists. Similar to private cloud computing, public cloud computing allows users to access the same servers and infrastructure as the cloud vendor while maintaining the privacy and security of their data and business logic.

A single software instance* that provided services to several users, or tenants, was the traditional definition of multitenancy.

Multi-Tenancy

In contrast, the word now refers to shared cloud infrastructure as opposed to just a shared software instance in contemporary cloud computing.

Cloud computing: What is it?

Applications and data are stored on remote servers located in various data centers and accessed through the Internet in cloud computing. Instead of being stored on individual client devices (such as laptops or smartphones) or in servers inside a company’s headquarters, data and apps are centrally located in the cloud.

Since many contemporary programs are cloud-based, a user can access their Facebook account and post information from several devices, for instance.

What advantages does multitenancy offer?

Multitenancy makes a lot of the advantages of cloud computing available. Two significant ways that multitenancy enhances cloud computing are as follows:

Better utilization of resources: One machine dedicated to one tenant is inefficient because it is unlikely that that tenant will utilize the entire computing capacity of the machine. The use of resources is maximized by sharing machines across several renters.

Cheaper costs: A cloud vendor may provide services to many clients at a far lower cost than if each customer needed their own dedicated infrastructure. This is because several customers can share resources.

Advantages of Multitenancy:
  • Use of Available resources are maximized by sharing resources.
  • Customer’s Cost of the Physical Hardware System is reduced.
  • It reduces the usage of physical devices and thus power consumption and cooling cost savings.
  • Save Vendor’s cost as it becomes difficult for the cloud vendor to provide separate Physical Services to each individual.
  • Provides isolation to users while maximizing resource utilization.
Disadvantages of Multitenancy:
  • As data is stored in third-party services, this reduces the security of our data and put it in vulnerable condition.
  • Unauthorized access will cause damage to data.
  • Possibility of competition for system resources.
  • It has a single point of failure since there is only one instance of a resource, clients face loss of service in such cases.
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What disadvantages does multi-tenancy have?

Issues with compliance and potential security risks: Regulatory requirements may prevent some businesses from storing data in shared infrastructure, regardless of how secure it is. Additionally, if the cloud vendor has configured their infrastructure properly, security issues or corrupted data from one tenant may not propagate to other tenants on the same server due to the rarity of such occurrences. The fact that cloud vendors are often able to invest more in their security than individual firms can help to partly alleviate these security threats.

The “noisy neighbor” effect: If one tenant is utilizing excessive computing resources, this could affect how well the other tenants perform.

How does multiple tenancy function?

Here, we’ll look more closely at the technical concepts that enable multi-tenancy across various cloud computing models.

In-Public Cloud Computing

Imagine having a unique automobile engine that many different cars and car owners could readily share. Every automobile owner has slightly varied expectations for how the engine should perform: some demand a potent 8-cylinder engine, while others demand a more fuel-efficient 4-cylinder engine. Imagine that this unique engine had the ability to change itself at each startup in order to better serve the needs of the automobile owner.

Multitenancy is implemented in a manner akin to this by several public cloud service providers. Multitenancy is typically referred to as a shared software instance by cloud providers. They keep metadata* about every tenant and utilize this information to modify the software instance at runtime to satisfy the requirements of every tenant. Through permissions, the tenants are separated from one another. Despite the fact that they all use the same software instance, they all use and interact with it differently.

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In-Container architecture

Containers are self-contained software packages that contain an application, system libraries, system settings, and any other components required for the application to function. No matter where it is hosted, an application will run the same thanks to containers.

Each container operates as if it were the only system running on the host machine. Containers are partitioned from one another into various user space environments. Multiple containers built by several cloud customers can operate on a single host computer because containers are self-contained units.

The use of serverless computing

In the serverless computing model, applications are divided into smaller units called functions, and each function only executes when necessary, independently from the others. (This cloud computing approach is often referred to as FaaS or Function-as-a-Service.)

Serverless operations, as their name suggests, execute on any computer that is available in the architecture of the serverless provider rather than on dedicated servers. Serverless services frequently run code from several of their customers on a single server at any same time due to the fact that corporations are not granted their own distinct physical servers, which is another kind of multitenancy.

Take Away:

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