SaaS storage strategies: Scaling, securing & tuning multi-tenant data (SAS306)

Scaling and Securing Multi-Tenant Data

Key Takeaways

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.

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