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Use a tenant account: Overview

Contributors netapp-lhalbert netapp-madkat netapp-perveilerk netapp-chikkusu
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A tenant account allows you to use either the Simple Storage Service (S3) REST API or the Swift REST API to store and retrieve objects in a StorageGRID system.

What is a tenant account?

Each tenant account has its own federated or local groups, users, S3 buckets or Swift containers, and objects.

Optionally, tenant accounts can be used to segregate stored objects by different entities. For example, multiple tenant accounts can be used for either of these use cases:

  • Enterprise use case: If the StorageGRID system is being used within an enterprise, the grid's object storage might be segregated by the different departments in the organization. For example, there might be tenant accounts for the Marketing department, the Customer Support department, the Human Resources department, and so on.

    Note If you use the S3 client protocol, you can also use S3 buckets and bucket policies to segregate objects between the departments in an enterprise. You do not need to create separate tenant accounts. See the instructions for implementing S3 client applications.

  • Service provider use case: If the StorageGRID system is being used by a service provider, the grid's object storage might be segregated by the different entities that lease the storage. For example, there might be tenant accounts for Company A, Company B, Company C, and so on.

How to create a tenant account

Tenant accounts are created by a StorageGRID grid administrator using the Grid Manager. When creating a tenant account, the grid administrator specifies the following information:

  • Display name for the tenant (the tenant's account ID is assigned automatically and cannot be changed).

  • Whether the tenant account will use the S3 or Swift.

  • For S3 tenant accounts: Whether the tenant account is allowed to use platform services. If the use of platform services is allowed, the grid must be configured to support their use.

  • Optionally, a storage quota for the tenant account—​the maximum number of gigabytes, terabytes, or petabytes available for the tenant's objects. A tenant's storage quota represents a logical amount (object size), not a physical amount (size on disk).

  • If identity federation is enabled for the StorageGRID system, which federated group has Root Access permission to configure the tenant account.

  • If single sign-on (SSO) is not in use for the StorageGRID system, whether the tenant account will use its own identity source or share the grid's identity source, and the initial password for the tenant's local root user.

In addition, grid administrators can enable the S3 Object Lock setting for the StorageGRID system if S3 tenant accounts need to comply with regulatory requirements. When S3 Object Lock is enabled, all S3 tenant accounts can create and manage compliant buckets.

Configure S3 tenants

After an S3 tenant account is created, you can access the Tenant Manager to perform tasks such as the following:

  • Setting up identity federation (unless the identity source is shared with the grid), or creating local groups and users

  • Managing S3 access keys

  • Creating and managing S3 buckets, including compliant buckets

  • Using platform services (if enabled)

  • Monitoring storage usage

Important While you can create and manage S3 buckets with the Tenant Manager, you must have S3 access keys and use the S3 REST API to ingest and manage objects.

Configure Swift tenants

After a Swift tenant account is created, you can access the Tenant Manager to perform tasks such as the following:

  • Setting up identity federation (unless the identity source is shared with the grid), and creating local groups and users

  • Monitoring storage usage

Important Swift users must have the Root Access permission to access the Tenant Manager. However, the Root Access permission does not allow users to authenticate into the Swift REST API to create containers and ingest objects. Users must have the Swift Administrator permission to authenticate into the Swift REST API.

Use the Tenant Manager

The Tenant Manager allows you to manage all aspects of a StorageGRID tenant account.

You can use the Tenant Manager to monitor a tenant account's storage usage and to manage users with identity federation or by creating local groups and users. For S3 tenant accounts, you can also manage S3 keys, manage S3 buckets, and configure platform services.