WSO2 Identity Server User and Tenants

Question

I don't quite get

• when to use tenant
• difference of tenant from user
• are users also tenants?

I understand that multitenancy is about environment and maximizing resources based on reading this .

Answer 1

When to use tenant?

You can use tenant if you want an isolated environment for a set of users. For example, if you have separate departments in a company, you can create a tenant for each department.

The difference of tenant from user?

A user is a representation of an individual/device whereas the tenant is a collection of users, configurations, artefacts etc.

Are users also tenants?

Users are not tenants. Rather users are part of tenants. A tenant can contain an admin user, other users etc.

Answer 2

Farasath has given direct answers to your questions. But let me explain this further. Let's say you have a large company which has multiple departments that work independently, and each of them has their own user base, different roles/permission sets etc.

Now if you want to develop a system for your company, you need to manage those departments independently. That's where tenant concept comes to your help. You can create tenants for each department. Inside each tenant, you can create users, roles, permissions etc. You can even configure external userstores in tenants. Those are not visible to other tenants. Users of tenant X see like that the server is used only by their tenant. But all tenants use the same server (hardware resources) under the hood.

A good example is WSO2 Cloud itself. When you signup to WSO2 API or App cloud, you are asked for a tenant name, and then a new tenant will be created for you. There you can create your own users/roles/apps/apis and whatnot.

Hope tenant concept is clear to you now. If not, feel free to raise your questions.