title: Prefect Server: What is the role of a Tenant?
body: <p>In attempting to set up Prefect 0.14.15 for Flow execution across multiple Agents using the Docker Compose file produced by <code>prefect server config</code>, I was surprised to discover that that Prefect's Server requires a Tenant in order for an Agent to connect. I investigated to find that Prefect's docs provide info on the usage syntax of their <a href="https://docs.prefect.io/api/latest/cli/server.html#create-tenant" rel="nofollow noreferrer">create-tenant</a> and <a href="https://docs.prefect.io/api/latest/cli/auth.html#list-tenants" rel="nofollow noreferrer">list-tenants</a> CLI operations. However, I've looked extensively through the linked pages — along with the rest of Prefect's documentation and accompanying tutorials — for any mention of Tenants, and only found <a href="https://docs.prefect.io/orchestration/concepts/api.html#authentication" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the following</a> brief mention:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>Once authenticated, user-based API keys can be used to generate short-lived JWT auth tokens for any tenant the user belongs to. These API keys inherit any permissions the user has in that tenant, allowing full API access.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>What, exactly, is a Tenant in Prefect? It doesn't appear to be specific to Prefect's <a href="https://www.prefect.io/why-prefect/hybrid-model/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Hybrid Execution model</a>. How, then, does it fit into the interactions between the Server, Agents, and Client before and during the execution of a Prefect Flow? What does it mean to say that a user &quot;belongs to&quot; or is &quot;in&quot; a tenant? And what is accomplished by requiring it to register an Agent with the Server?</p>