Multi-Tenancy
A single software instance serving multiple customers (tenants) while keeping their data isolated. Can be achieved at the database, schema, or row level.
What is Multi-Tenancy?
A single software instance serving multiple customers (tenants) while keeping their data isolated. Can be achieved at the database, schema, or row level.
Multi-Tenancy is a intermediate-level concept that sits in the Cloud Infrastructure area of system design. Engineers reach for it whenever they need to reason about real-world trade-offs in that space — not just for textbook correctness, but because real production systems at companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Google make these decisions every day.
If you want to go deeper than this definition — with diagrams, code, and a quiz to lock it in — work through the "Multi-Tenancy" lesson linked below. It walks through the why, the mechanism, the trade-offs, and how the giants actually use it in production.
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Full interactive lesson with diagrams, code examples, real-world references, and a quiz.
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Related glossary terms you might want to look up next.
Database Partitioning
Dividing a large table into smaller, more manageable pieces while keeping them in the same database. Sharding is partitioning across servers.
RBAC
Role-Based Access Control: assigns permissions to roles (admin, editor, viewer), then assigns roles to users. Simpler to manage than per-user permissions.
VPC
Virtual Private Cloud: a logically isolated section of the cloud where you launch resources in a virtual network you define. Controls IP ranges, subnets, route tables, and gateways.