Scaling and Securing Multi-Tenant Data
Key Takeaways
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Deployment Models:
- Silo model: Dedicated resources for each tenant, simpler but less efficient.
- Pool model: Shared resources, more efficient but complex to manage isolation.
- Bridge model: A mix of silo and pool, balancing isolation and efficiency.
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Security and Access Patterns:
- IAM-based authentication works well for silo models but has limits in pool models.
- Secrets Manager can be used for credential management in pool models.
- Token Vending Machine (TVM) can be used to scope credentials for a single tenant in a shared compute environment.
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Scaling Strategies:
- Vertical scaling: Increasing resources of a single storage instance.
- Connection management: Using RDS Proxy to handle connection scaling.
- Horizontal scaling: Adding more storage instances and managing the routing complexity.
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Efficiency and Optimization:
- Query optimization: Batching writes, co-locating tenant data, and pre-aggregating data.
- Physical optimization: Table partitioning based on tenant ID to improve per-tenant query performance.
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Sharding and Limitless Database:
- Manual sharding can introduce complexity in request routing, consistency, and operations.
- Limitless Database (for PostgreSQL) provides a managed sharding solution to handle scaling and operations.
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Backup and Restore:
- Backup at the physical layer can lead to restoring all tenants, complicating single-tenant restore.
- Separation of backup and restore can provide more control over tenant-level backup and restore.
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Fairness and Isolation:
- Implement rate limiting at the application layer to protect the storage infrastructure.
- Consider tenant migration strategies to handle noisy neighbors or VIP customers.
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Data Modeling:
- Associate tenant ID with every data item to enable tenant-level isolation and operations.
- Focus on efficiency in the data model to improve query performance and reduce compute requirements.
- Set upstream limits in the application to prevent storage from becoming the bottleneck.
Conclusion
The key to building a scalable and secure multi-tenant data architecture is to consider various deployment models, access patterns, scaling strategies, and optimization techniques. By leveraging managed services and following best practices, you can create a robust and efficient storage architecture that can scale with your SaaS application.