What is database sharding and when do you use it?

Sharding is the process of breaking a large database into smaller, more manageable pieces

(shards), each of which is stored on a different server.

• When to use it:
• When a single database server can no longer handle the volume of data or

queries.

• When scaling vertically (increasing server resources) is no longer

cost-effective or possible.

• How it works:
• The data is divided based on a specific shard key (e.g., user ID, geographic

region, etc.).

• Each shard contains a subset of the data and is stored on a separate server

or cluster.

Example: In an e-commerce platform, you could shard user data based on geographic

region. Users from the US might be stored in one shard, while users from Europe are stored

in another.