A Crash Course in Database Sharding

As an application grows in popularity, it attracts more active users and incorporates additional features. This growth leads to a daily increase in data generation, which is a positive indicator from a business perspective. 

However, it can also pose challenges to the application's architecture, particularly in terms of database scalability.

The database is a critical component of any application, but it is also one of the most difficult components to scale horizontally. When an application receives increased traffic and data volume, the database can become a performance bottleneck, impacting the user experience.

Sharding is a technique that addresses the challenges of horizontal database scaling. It involves partitioning the database into smaller, more manageable units called shards.

In this post, we’ll cover the fundamentals of database sharding, exploring its various approaches, technical considerations, and real-world case studies showcasing how companies have implemented sharding to scale their databases.

What is Sharding?