Multi-tenancy is a core software architecture design pattern. It refers to providing services for multiple mutually isolated "tenants" on a single software application instance (or a set of shared infrastructure). In Sangfor, this is embodied as multi-tenants sharing a resource pool. Each tenant is usually an organization, department, or customer group. They share the same set of applications and computing resources, but each has independent and logically isolated data, configurations, user management, and operation views.

For customers who adopt Sangfor's solutions, the core values brought by the multi-tenant architecture are as follows:

Resource Intensification, Cost Reduction and Efficiency Improvement

• Multiple tenants share the same set of hardware, networks, and software licenses, which greatly improves resource utilization and avoids repeated investment and operation, and maintenance costs required for deploying an independent system for each tenant.
• Administrators can manage all tenants on a unified console, which greatly simplifies the complexity of operation and maintenance and improves operational efficiency.

Strong Logical Isolation and Security Assurance

• This is the lifeline of the multi-tenant architecture. The data, configurations, policies, and user information of each tenant are strictly isolated logically. It is similar to apartments in the same building, each with independent door locks and security systems. The operations and access of one tenant will never affect other tenants, and even less can they see any information of other tenants.
• Combined with Sangfor's profound accumulation in the security field, the multi-tenant architecture ensures data privacy and business security among tenants and meets strict compliance requirements.

Flexible Customization and Independent Experience

• Each tenant can perform independent configuration and management according to its own business needs and security policies. For example, different branch companies can set different internet behavior management policies or different security protection levels.
• From the perspective of tenants, what they experience is a fully customized and independent system environment, with an experience no different from having an exclusive system.

Simplified Operation and Maintenance, Rapid Deployment

• Platform administrators can quickly create new tenants, assign resources and permissions to them, and realize the rapid launch of new businesses or new branches.
• Maintenance operations such as system upgrades and patching only need to be performed once on the shared platform, and then take effect for all tenants, which significantly reduces the workload of operation and maintenance.

In Sangfor's product system, the multi-tenant architecture usually involves the following key roles and concepts:

• Platform Administrator/Super Administrator: Possesses the highest authority of the system. Responsible for managing the underlying infrastructure, creating and managing tenants, allocating resources, and monitoring the operation status of the entire platform.
• Tenant Administrator: Created by the platform administrator. Responsible for managing users, policies, configurations, and resources within the tenant they belong to. Tenant administrators cannot see or interfere with any information of other tenants.
• End User: Belongs to a specific tenant and uses application services allocated and configured by the tenant administrator of that tenant.
• Logical Isolation: Through technologies such as permission systems, policy configurations, and data identification, strict isolation between different tenants is realized on shared physical resources. This is the technical cornerstone for realizing "one system, used by multiple parties".