Multi-tenant application on Windows Azure

Question

Hi guys,

We want to create multitenant application with shared database table structure.

Currently with standard SQL Server we could achieve that with providing TenantID for each table.

Could we achieve the same on Windows Azure, but without TenantIDs?

Best regards, Alexey Zakharov

Answer 1

I would think you'd want to do the same thing (use a TenantID column in SQL Azure or in Windows Azure tables).

Answer 2

I concur with the answer smarx gave you, but also consider this: If you have multiple tenants and this drives you above a SQL Azure size limit (say, 1GB or 10GB), you'd need to make a jump to the next-larger database, and this could increase your cost beyond what you want:

• 1GB: $10 monthly
• 10GB: $100 monthly
• 50GB: being released in June, presumably 5x10GB cost

So in the case where you're under the 1GB limit with one tenant, but over 1GB with, say, 2-5 tenants, it would be more cost-effective to set up separate 1GB databases for each tenant, and then manage this sharding in your business tier, based on TenantID.

Answer 3

The question was about another thing. I want to know if Azure SQL provide multi tenant database with shared schema as a feature. – Alexey Zakharov May 21 at 6:00

The short answer is that it doesn't. SQl Azure is essentially (a large subset of) SQL Server.