What is Multitenancy in Cloud Computing?

Multitenancy: What Is It?

Multitenancy in cloud computing refers to the use of the same computing resources by many 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. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, containers, and serverless computing are just a few of the public cloud computing models that include multitenant architecture.

Consider how banking operates to comprehend multitenancy. Even though their assets are housed in the same location, multiple customers can put their money in the same bank and keep them fully distinct. The bank's clients don't communicate with one another, have no access to other customers' money, and aren't even aware of one another. Public cloud computing allows users to access the same servers and infrastructure as the cloud vendor while maintaining privacy, data security, and business logic.

A single software instance that served multiple users, or tenants, was the traditional definition of multitenancy. 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.

User can access their Facebook account and upload information from several devices because many contemporary programs are cloud-based.

What are the Advantages of Cloud Computing Multitenancy?

Only multitenancy makes many of the advantages of cloud computing practical. Two significant ways that multitenancy enhances cloud computing are as follows:

Better resource management:  It is inefficient to reserve one physical server for only one customer, as it is unlikely that this single tenant will utilize the entire computing capacity of the machine. With multiple customers sharing resources instead of having separate physical services the use of resources is optimized.

Lower prices: Multitenancy is cost-effective because cloud service providers may provide their services to many customers at a considerably lesser cost for each of them than if running single-tenant hardware. This is because multiple distinct user groups share the same resources. This advantage means customers pay less for the same service.

No maintenance costs on the client side: Since each client doesn't own but only rents their own dedicated infrastructure, it's up to the cloud vendor to maintain the cloud environment. This means that the client doesn't have to pay for the team of people who would monitor and manage the cloud infrastructure.

What are the Disadvantages of Multitenancy in Cloud Computing?

Potential security risks and compliance issues: Due to regulatory requirements and their own business rules, some organizations may not be able to store data in a shared environment, no matter how secure. Additionally, security issues or corrupted data can spread from one tenant to other tenants on the same server, although this is extremely rare and should not happen if the central cloud provider has properly configured dedicated cloud infrastructure. These security risks are somewhat mitigated by the fact that a cloud host can often invest more in their security than individual companies.

The ‘Noisy Neighbor’ Effect: When one tenant uses too much machine computing power, it slows down the performance of other tenants. Again, this shouldn't happen if the cloud host has set up their cloud environments correctly.

How Does EPAM Help Companies With Cloud Deployment?

At EPAM, we have Maestro, a hybrid cloud management platform that enables unified, user-friendly, and fast access to virtual infrastructure. Maestro enables easy creation, management, and monitoring of resources, transparent billing, and role-specific permissions tailored to users.

Also, there is Aos, an edge service delivery and orchestration platform. It enables OEMs and Tier 1 organizations to create cloud applications by supporting the standardization of software development languages, tools, and processes.

Which Option Removes the Risk of Multitenancy?

Here, we'll deep dive into the technical principles behind cloud architecture and implementing multitenancy in different types of cloud computing.

Public Cloud Computing

Imagine a special car engine that can easily be shared by multiple cars and owners. Every car owner's needs for engine performance are slightly different: some owners want a powerful 8-cylinder engine, while others want a more economical 4-cylinder engine. Now imagine this particular engine reinventing itself every time it starts to better meet the needs of its owner.

This is similar to how many public cloud providers implement multitenancy. Most cloud service providers define multitenancy as a shared software instance. They store metadata about each tenant and use that data to customize software instances at runtime based on each tenant's needs. Clients are isolated from each other through permissions. Although they all use the same software instance, they use and experience the software differently.

Container Architecture

Containers are self-contained software packages that contain applications, system libraries, system settings, and everything else an application needs to run. Containers help ensure that applications run the same way no matter where they are hosted. Containers are separated from each other into distinct user space environments, each running like a unique system on the host. Because containers are self-contained, multiple containers created by different cloud customers can run on a single host.

Serverless Computing

Serverless computing is a model in which an application is broken down into smaller pieces called functions, each of which runs only when required, separate from other functions. (This model is also known as Function-as-a-Service or FaaS.)

Serverless operations, as their name suggests, execute on any computer that is available in the architecture of the serverless host 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.

Using a Private Cloud

Similar to public, private cloud computing makes use of multi tenant architecture. The other tenants are not from outside groups, which is where the difference lies. Company A and Company B share infrastructure on the public cloud. Private cloud computing allows various teams at Company A to share infrastructure.

Bottom Line

To make sure multitenancy is clear, let's use one more famous analogy to explain it. Multitenant clouds can be compared with an apartment building. All the people living in it share some resources such as electricity and water. However, only the owners of separate apartments have private access to them and can decide to whom to give the key to their apartment. Multitenancy in cloud computing works in a very similar way. Multiple tenants use the same computing resources but the cloud host is in charge of keeping tenants’ resources separate and secure. Also, it's the tenants who can facilitate data access control.

Thanks to all the benefits multitenancy has, including both public and private clouds, the number of cloud customers sharing the same resources is on the rise.

*The article was updated in December 2022