Throttling in a Cloud Computing Environment

Throttling is the key to making multitenancy a reality in cloud computing.

Multitenancy refers to a principle in software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a server, serving multiple client organizations (tenants). Multitenancy is contrasted with a multi-instance architecture where separate software instances (or hardware systems) are set up for different client organizations.

Many cloud computing offerings are multi-instance, and not multitenant, as they lack the core platform capabilities to support true multitenancy.

However, to realize pay-as-you-go model of cloud computing, you need throttling as a key ingredient of the cloud platform. This article explains, what, why & how of throttling in a cloud computing environment.

Throttling is about controlling the usage of

  • Network bandwidth
  • Data storage
  • CPU usage
  • I/O operations

Throttling can be done to keep track of current usage of cloud computing subscribers – aka tenants, help in billing them and also help with determining to scale up or down the resources based on the usage of those by tenants.

 

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