Multi-tenant application on Windows Azure

Question

We want to create multitenant application with shared database table structure.

Currently with standard SQL Server we could achieve that with providing TenantID for each

Answer 1

I concur with the answer smarx gave you, but also consider this: If you have multiple tenants and this drives you above a SQL Azure size limit (say, 1GB or 10GB), you'd need to make a jump to the next-larger database, and this could increase your cost beyond what you want:

• 1GB: $10 monthly
• 10GB: $100 monthly
• 50GB: being released in June, presumably 5x10GB cost

So in the case where you're under the 1GB limit with one tenant, but over 1GB with, say, 2-5 tenants, it would be more cost-effective to set up separate 1GB databases for each tenant, and then manage this sharding in your business tier, based on TenantID.