Chapter 12: Multi-Tenancy

Multi-tenancy is a software architecture design where multiple users or organizations share the same instance of the software and its underlying resources. This is a standard practice with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings, such as Cloud Pak for Data as a service in the IBM Cloud, but the interpretation of tenancy and how this tenancy is implemented can vary widely on-premises or in private clouds. Security and compliance requirements in the enterprise, as well as the quality of service assurances, play a significant role in deciding how much can be shared.

Nowadays, it is a fundamental expectation that any true cloud-native platform stack enables at least some level of multi-tenant sharing out of the box. Supporting a new project or initiative can be accelerated just by reusing the existing shared infrastructure. Trivially, you could assume assigning independent virtual machines (VMs) to each tenant would be sufficient to achieve multi-tenancy –...