Tenants and Projects

NOTE This article uses the term "tenant" to refer to Kubernetes tenants, Big Data tenants, and AI/ML projects.

Tenants are created by the Platform Administrator after the Controller host has been installed. The infrastructure resources (e.g. CPU, memory, GPU, storage) available on the Worker hosts are split among the tenants on the platform. Each tenant is allocated a set of resources and restricts access to a set of data to only those users authorized to access the tenant. Resources used by one tenant cannot be used by another tenant. All users who are members of a tenant can access the resources and data objects available to that tenant.

Container Platform isolates tenants by default, meaning that the resources in one tenant cannot view or access the resources in any other tenant. You may disable tenant network isolation using the Network tab of the System Settings screen, as described in Network Tab. Container Platform also authenticates users on the platform level by default. You may choose to enable user authentication on a per-tenant basis using the User Authentication Tab of the System Settings screen, as described in Configuring User Authentication Settings.

You will need to decide how to create tenants to best suit your organizational needs, such as by:

  • Office location: If your organization has multiple office locations, you could choose to create one or more tenants per location. For example, you could create a tenant for the San Francisco office and one for the New York office. Container Platform does not take location into account; this is just an example of how you could use a tenant.
  • Department: You could choose to create one or more tenants for each department. For example, you could create one tenant each for the Manufacturing, Marketing, Research & Development, and Sales departments.
  • Use cases, application lifecycle, or tools: Different use cases for Big Data analytics and data science may have different image/resource requirements.
  • Combination: You could choose to create one tenant by department for each location. For example, you could create a tenant for the Marketing department in San Francisco and another tenant for the Marketing department in New York.

Some of the factors to consider when planning how to create tenants may include:

  • Structure of your organization: This may include such considerations as the department(s), team(s), and/or function(s) that need to be able to run jobs.
  • Use cases/tool requirements: Different use cases for Big Data analytics and data science may have different image and resource requirements.
  • Seasonal needs: Some parts of your organization may have varying needs depending on the time of year. For example, your Accounting department may need to run jobs between January 1 and April 15 each year but have little to no needs at other times of the year.
  • Amount and location(s) of hosts: The number and location(s) of the hosts that you will use to deploy a Container Platform may also be a factor. If your hosts are physically distant from the users who need to run jobs, then network bandwidth may become an important factor as well.
  • Personnel who need Container Platform access: The locations, titles, and job functions of the people who will need to be able to access Container Platform at any level (Platform Administrator, Tenant Administrator, or Tenant Member) may influence how you plan and create tenants.
  • IT policies: Your organization's IT policies may play a role in determining how you create tenants and who may access them.
  • Regulatory needs: If your organization deals with regulated products or services (such as pharmaceuticals or financial products), then you may need to create additional tenants to safeguard regulated data and keep it separate from non-regulated data.

These are just a few of the possible criteria you must evaluate when planning how to create tenants. Container Platform has the power and flexibility to support the tenants you create regardless of the schema you use. You may create, edit, and delete tenants at any time. However, careful planning for how you will use your Container Platform that includes the specific tenant(s) your organization will need now and in the future will help you better plan your entire Container Platform installation from the number and type of hosts to the tenants you create once Container Platform is installed on those hosts.