1. MT Internals (enabling multi-tenant SaaS “in the cloud”)
About me
Jan Vonka, Senior Alfresco for over 5 years
Core Repository team and Cloud technical lead, most recently implementing Hybrid Sync
About the talk
Multi-tenant internals … marketing: “enabling multi-tenant SaaS “in the cloud” (
MT Internals (enabling multi-tenant SaaS “in the cloud”)
Jan Vonka
Core Repository - Cloud / Hybrid Services

2. Agenda Multi-Tenant (MT) Overview MT Core MT 4.x and “in the cloud”
What’s new in Alfresco 4.x ?
How does Alfresco “in the cloud” differ ?
Summary and Feedback (Q & A)
About the audience
Who’s tried to use MT option (Community and/or Enterprise) ?
Who’s has used Alfresco “in the cloud” … Network => Tenant

3. MT Overview

4. Repository (including Transforms)
MT Overview
4.x instance – example 1
Share
APIs / Protocols
(CMIS, REST, WebDAV, …)
On order of 4 machine nodes (physical and/or virtual)
Repository (including Transforms) DB
Content
(Shared F/S)
Search
(Solr)

5. MT Overview 4.x instance – example 2 Share nodes APIs / Protocols
(CMIS, REST, WebDAV, …)
Repository Cluster R2 R1 R3
In addition, also load-balancers and/or web proxies
On order of 10 to 15 machine nodes (physical and/or virtual)
Transformer nodes T2 T1 T3 DB
DB2
DB1
Content
(Shared F/S)
Search nodes
Solr2
Solr1
Solr3

6. MT Overview Alfresco “vanilla” – single-tenant (single instance)
Content DB
Search Index
Alfresco

7. MT Overview Alfresco – single-tenant (multi-instance) T2 T1 T4 T3
Content DB
Search Index
Alfresco
Cluster
Content DB
Search Index
Alfresco
Cluster T4 T3
Content DB
Search Index
Alfresco
Cluster
Content DB
Search Index
Alfresco
Cluster

8. MT Overview Alfresco MT – multi-tenant (single instance) Content DB
Search Index
Alfresco Cluster T1 T2 T3 T4
Data is shown as logically partitioned, but in fact is co-mingled by default (in terms of DB, Content binaries and Solr indexes)

9. MT Overview Why use MT ? Economies of scale Easier to manage Scale
Lower licensing / TCO
Easier to manage
Less administrative overhead, easier upgrades
Scale
Cloud – multi-tenant SaaS (Software as a Service)
New use-cases
Cloud – eg. B2B collaboration

10. MT Overview Alfresco has provided multi-tenant option since v3
Single instance / multiple tenants
Each tenant can access logical repo
Full partitioning (isolated tenants)
UIs + APIs / Protocols
Dynamic Models

11. MT Core

12. MT Core MT implementation – tenant context
Auth (Security) ctx => fully qualified userid
minimise impact on APIs + support standard protocols
Internally partitioned by Alfresco “store”
workspace://SpacesStore

13. MT Core MT implementation – tenant context (cont’)
Company Home
Sites
Site1, Site2, …
User Homes …
- alf_store (root_node_id) <- alf_node (<- alf_node_aspects, alf_node_properties) <= alf_child_assoc

14. MT Core MT implementation – create tenant
When creating a tenant, we “bootstrap” the data …
create tenant-specific stores (x5)
Live store (workspace://SpacesStore)
Version2 store
Archive store
User store
System store
add to “alf_tenant” table
Tenant Domain, Enabled/Disabled, Content Root (if not co-mingled)

15. MT Core MT implementation – Services vs DAOs Services / APIs
“always” accessed in tenant ctx
notable exception is QuickShare service
public/shared links => no login required
Persistence DAOs
direct use
in some cases, apply to multiple / all (?) tenants
eg. system-wide patches / jobs etc

16. MT Core Quick reference … something to review later
MultiTServiceImpl  TenantService
Provides name mangling – injected in various services
MultiTAdminServiceImpl  TenantAdminService
Manage tenants – create, disable / enable, delete
MultiTNodeServiceInterceptor
example that wraps (intercepts) generic NodeService
instead of injecting TenantService (or extending)

17. MT Core See: node-services-context.xml
<bean id="multiTNodeServiceInterceptor" class="org.alfresco.repo.tenant.MultiTNodeServiceInterceptor">
<property name="tenantService">
<ref bean="tenantService" />
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="mtAwareNodeService" class="org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactoryBean" >
<property name="targetName">
<value>dbNodeService</value>
<property name="proxyInterfaces">
<list>
<value>org.alfresco.service.cmr.repository.NodeService</value>
</list>
<property name="interceptorNames">
<value>multiTNodeServiceInterceptor</value>
<bean id="dbNodeService" class="org.alfresco.repo.node.db.DbNodeServiceImpl" init-method="init" >
<!-- … more here … ->

18. MT Core Other examples … Core Services, eg. APIs & Protocols, eg.
NodeService -> FileFolderService
ContentService
SearchService
WorkflowService (JBPM + Activiti since v4)
… etc
APIs & Protocols, eg.
WebScripts
CMIS
WebDAV

19. What’s new in Alfresco v4.x ?

20. What’s new in Alfresco v4
Changes include:
Activiti support for MT
in addition to JBPM
Solr support for MT
“core” tracking, tenant ctx filter, …
MT pre-configured (enable w/ 1st tenant)
note: since Enterprise / Community 4.2.a

21. What’s new in Alfresco v4
Changes include:
Alf_Tenant table
replaces attribute list
Common implementation
eg. for (tenant-based) caches
Various bug fixes & other related improvements
from Cloud release + customer feedback

22. How does Alfresco “in the cloud” differ ?

23. How does Alfresco “in the cloud” differ ?
MT Core 4.x except hosted on AWS and …
Alfresco Cluster
DB (RDS)
Content (S3)
Search Index (Solr)

24. How does Alfresco “in the cloud” differ ?
… with Tenant (aka. Network switching)
Unlike MT core, cloud allows Tenant switching
User has primary tenant
Can be invited to secondary tenants
We split Tenant ctx from Auth ctx (see TenantUtil)
Share + APIs support tenant switching
via cloud extensions for:
Share / Surf
WebDAV protocol
SharePoint protocol
Core Repo APIs – including the new “public API”
Key difference is support for Network switching
Other
Additional Network attributes (eg. type of Network, max file upload size …)
Network usage / quota …

25. How does Alfresco “in the cloud” differ ?
Scaling – networks, users, sites, documents, …
Hosted Core MT might be “100s” of tenants
Cloud supports “100s of thousands” of tenants
eg companies signed up in first 3 months
Generic improvements get pushed back to core code

26. Futures

27. Futures Health warning – this slide is speculative 
Driven by both Enterprise and Cloud use-cases
Scaling – scale & partition tiers, as needed
SharePoint Protocol
Refactor of MT dynamic models (+ CMIS 1.1)
More dynamic Share / platform (per-tenant overrides)
Public / Private / Hybrid – MT vs ST …
What would you like to see on the list ?
SPP – initially “in the cloud”
Partitioning … eg. DB (multi-schema, multi-instance ?), Solr partitioning (multi-core, multi-instance ?)
Optimise Enterprise networks/customers ?
Refactor of Dynamic Models cache - eg. limited custom modeling in the cloud ?, CMIS 1.1 – optional type management support
Public vs Private - … eg. public vs private instances “in the cloud” (likely single tenant, but not necessarily on-prem) => managed service … plus (optionally) hybrid

28. Summary

29. Summary MT Core What’s new in Alfresco 4.x ?
Fully partitioned by tenant context
What’s new in Alfresco 4.x ?
Activiti, Solr, … + improvements & bug fixes
How does Alfresco “in the cloud” differ ?
Network switching
Please try it out
Download latest Community 4.2 …

30. Thank you  … Questions & Feedback. Photo credits: http://www