AdvancedTechnical
5 min
Multi-Tenant Architecture Design
ArchitectureSaaSSecurity
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Interview Question
How would you design a secure and scalable multi-tenant SaaS application?
Key Points to Cover
- Choose tenancy model: shared DB, schema-per-tenant, or DB-per-tenant
- Enforce strict tenant isolation at all layers
- Apply per-tenant RBAC, rate limits, and quotas
- Implement monitoring, billing, and analytics per tenant
Evaluation Rubric
Chooses an appropriate tenancy model30% weight
Ensures strong tenant isolation30% weight
Implements quotas/rate limits20% weight
Addresses monitoring/billing needs20% weight
Hints
- 💡Isolation vs efficiency is the main trade-off.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- ⚠️Underestimating the complexity of tenant data isolation, leading to data leakage.
- ⚠️Over-reliance on a single tenancy model without considering alternatives for different use cases or compliance needs.
- ⚠️Neglecting to implement robust per-tenant rate limiting and quotas, resulting in performance issues for some tenants.
- ⚠️Poorly designed database schemas or indexing that hinder scalability under heavy multi-tenant load.
- ⚠️Failing to implement comprehensive logging and auditing for security and operational insights.
Potential Follow-up Questions
- ❓How do you migrate tenants across DBs?
- ❓What about noisy neighbor problems?
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