Multi-Tenancy by the shear definition of the word has been around for years. Wikipedia states traditional multi-tenancy is, “..a principle in software architecture  where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serving multiple client organizations (tenants).” It goes on to say, “..multiple customers share(ing) the same application, running on the same operating system, on the same hardware, with the same data storage mechanism. The distinction between the customers is achieved during application design, so that customers do not share or see each other's data.” Virtualization, naturally, has furthered this definition to allow for namely hardware abstraction which gives the appearance to the tenants of separate physical hardware. This in turn allows for more secure traffic and data isolation ultimately providing the underpinning for a new age of focused and secure Multi-Tenancy solutions…

The basis for this model is Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS. This model is nothing new and has existed, good or bad, in data centers for years. Again concepts are grouped around what we know and love about server virtualization. The ability to provision compute, memory, networking and storage to a customer for OS and application build without the need to manage the underlying physical components is key.

Clearly the greatest challenge to achieving and moving toward any cloud offering is guarantee of services provided (QOS/SLAs) and secure isolation. Not only that, this isolation must hold some level of accountability to be successful. If Jimmy the cloud administrator accidently deletes “Tenant X”, that must be track able.

As this new wrapper term comes to the forefront, partnerships are forming to provide referenced architectures that indeed (on the wrapper) meet these challenges. Market GO time will tell the real story.

The latest coalition between VMware, Cisco, and NetApp includes a tested and validated architecture to provide said solution, of which you can read about here. Although NetApp fulfills one of the pillars of this relationship, to me what they bring to the table is minimal. The real “beef” in this taco lies in the capabilities centered around all that Cisco and VMware provide, namely vSphere, vShield, UCS, Nexus and MDS switched infrastructure. The truth is, any enterprise capable storage vendor could fit this bill, although one with a suite of data center management tools would be peachy…

Now, where is Ionix to manage all this : )