System and method for supporting partitions in a multitenant application server environment

In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system and method for supporting partitions in a multitenant application server environment. In accordance with an embodiment, an application server administrator (e.g., a WLS administrator) can create or delete partitions; while a partition administrator can administer various aspects of a partition, for example create resource groups, deploy applications to a specific partition, and reference specific realms for a partition. Resource groups can be globally defined at the domain, or can be specific to a partition. Applications can be deployed to a resource group template at the domain level, or to a resource group scoped to a partition or scoped to the domain. The system can optionally associate one or more partitions with a tenant, for use by the tenant.