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Use feature flags for multi-tenant architecture

This guide explains how to implement App Lifecycle Manager feature flags in a multi-tenant environment without modifying your existing binary deployment process.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

Completed the Deploy feature flags quickstart .
A gcloud environment configured to manage App Lifecycle Manager resources.
An existing SaaS offering. For more information about how to create a SaaS offering, see Create a SaaS offering .

Resource modeling

In a multi-tenant setup, we recommend that you define a unit kind for your service or application, and a unit for every instance of the service or application (representing a tenant or deployment).

To implement feature flags in a multi-tenant environment, define Common Expression Language (CEL) attributes that identify your tenants, configure your application to inject tenant identifiers at runtime, and use evaluation rules to affect features for specific tenants.

For simpler cases, you can also manually create separate rollouts for each customer .

1. Create SaaS offering (if not already done)

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
saas  
create  
 "SAAS_NAME" 
  
 \ 
  
--project = 
 "PROJECT_ID" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
 "global" 
  
 \ 
  
--locations = 
 name 
 = 
 "LOCATION_1"

2. Create UnitKind

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
unit-kinds  
create  
 "tenant-service-kind" 
  
 \ 
  
--project = 
 "PROJECT_ID" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
 "global" 
  
 \ 
  
--saas = 
 "SAAS_NAME"

3. Create units for tenants

When creating units, use Labelsto categorize tenant services into groups (e.g., group=beta , group=preview , group=all ).

  # Create a unit for Tenant A (Beta group) 
gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
units  
create  
 "tenant-a-service" 
  
 \ 
  
--unit-kind = 
 "tenant-service-kind" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
 "LOCATION_1" 
  
 \ 
  
--labels = 
 "group=beta" 
 # Create a unit for Tenant B (Standard group) 
gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
units  
create  
 "tenant-b-service" 
  
 \ 
  
--unit-kind = 
 "tenant-service-kind" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
 "LOCATION_1" 
  
 \ 
  
--labels = 
 "group=all"

Define attributes and flags

You must formally define attributes (like customerID ) to ensure type safety in evaluation rules.

1. Create the customerID attribute

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
attributes  
create  
 "customer-id-attr" 
  
 \ 
  
--key = 
 "customerID" 
  
 \ 
  
--attribute-value-type = 
 "STRING" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global

2. Create the feature flag

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
create  
 "enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--key = 
 "enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--flag-value-type = 
BOOL  
 \ 
  
--unit-kind = 
 "tenant-service-kind"

Application integration

Integrate the OpenFeature SDK into your service. Your application must inject the customerID into the context at runtime.

Go Example:

  // Inject customerID into the evaluation context 
 evalCtx 
  
 := 
  
 map 
 [ 
 string 
 ] 
 any 
 { 
  
 "customerID" 
 : 
  
 currentTenant 
 . 
 ID 
 , 
 } 
 // Evaluate the flag 
 isEnabled 
 , 
  
 err 
  
 := 
  
 client 
 . 
 BooleanValue 
 ( 
  
 context 
 . 
 Background 
 (), 
  
 "enhanced-search" 
 , 
  
 false 
 , 
  
 evalCtx 
 , 
 )

Configure tenant-specific targeting

Use evaluation rules to enable a feature for specific customers.

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
update  
 "enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
 "global" 
  
--evaluation-spec = 
 '{ 
 "rules": [{ 
 "id": "allowlist-for-premium-tenants", 
 "condition": "customerID in [\"tenant-xyz-123\", \"tenant-abc-789\"]", 
 "target": "Enabled" 
 }], 
 "defaultTarget": "Disabled", 
 "attributes": ["projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/flagAttributes/customer-id-attr"] 
 }'

Manual gradual rollout with filters

For simpler use cases, you can emulate waves by triggering separate rollouts manually for each customer label.

1. Create revision and release

  # Create a Revision (Snapshot) 
gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
revisions  
create  
 "enhanced-search-rev-1" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global  
 \ 
  
--flag = 
 "enhanced-search" 
 # Create a Release 
gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
releases  
create  
 "release-of-enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global  
 \ 
  
--unit-kind = 
 "tenant-service-kind" 
  
 \ 
  
--revisions = 
 "enhanced-search-rev-1"

2. Trigger manual rollouts

You can manually orchestrate the rollout by triggering separate operations per target group using --unit-filter .

  # Rollout to Beta group first 
gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
rollouts  
create  
 "beta-rollout" 
  
 \ 
  
--flag-release = 
 "release-of-enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--rollout-kind = 
 "rollout-kind-of-enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global  
 \ 
  
--rollout-orchestration-strategy = 
 "Google.Cloud.Simple.AllAtOnce" 
  
 \ 
  
--unit-filter = 
 "labels.group == beta" 
 # After verification, rollout to the rest of the fleet 
gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
rollouts  
create  
 "full-rollout" 
  
 \ 
  
--flag-release = 
 "release-of-enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--rollout-kind = 
 "rollout-kind-of-enhanced-search" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global  
 \ 
  
--rollout-orchestration-strategy = 
 "Google.Cloud.Production" 
  
 \ 
  
--unit-filter = 
 "labels.group == all"

What's next

Learn about Experimentation and A/B Testing .
Learn about Troubleshooting .