Sharding

There are multiple approaches to scale-out but among alternatives patterns such as sharding and horizontal partitioning provides the best scalability. ❋ Cihangir (2010)

Another constraint with traditional RDBMS systems is data contention, and horizontal scaling techniques, such as sharding, have to be employed to ensure that performance does not degrade as more users are thrown in. ❋ Unknown (2010)

Scalability and high availability are achieved by automatically "sharding" and replicating data across the servers and data centers. ❋ Unknown (2009)

(There's a post on the MySQL Performance Blog called KISS KISS KISS listing a bunch of scalability techniques and how they're most likely not necessary -- YouTube didn't have sharding until two years ago.) ❋ Unknown (2009)

But the new system went further—it used a different way to handle a cluster of disks, more akin to the parallel-processing style of computing where a computational task would be split among multiple computers or processers than the “sharding” technique Google had used, which was to split up the web and assign regions of it to individual computers. ❋ Steven Levy (2011)

Now we have a plethora of new sharding techniques, and all sorts of grid solutions for getting away from the column/row paradigm. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Those familiar with computer terms may know this technique as “partitioning,” but, as Dean says, “everyone at Google calls it sharding because it sounds cooler.” ❋ Steven Levy (2011)

The Google File System, written by Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat, was invaluable in this process: it was designed to manage failure by “sharding” data, distributing it to multiple servers. ❋ Steven Levy (2011)

For tasks that require relational database capabilities at web scale, database sharding has become a favorite practice. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Most Microsoft based sites always defer sharding because of licensing costs, so they prefer to vertically scale (Windows Server + SQL server cost an arm and a leg to buy per server) If Markus goes this way, it is going to be a platform change to Linux/Solaris too. ❋ Unknown (2008)

I have absolutely no experience in scaling sites, but if a doubling of the database requires 6 times the cost, why not try sharding? ❋ Unknown (2008)

I thought most of the database time was spent on listing ads, and sites like ebay and other similar sites uses sharding there. ❋ Unknown (2008)

Please describe, in lay terms, what “sharding the server” means? ❋ Bettina Tizzy (2009)

Tateru - I had never heard of sharding until you mentioned it the other day. ❋ Bettina Tizzy (2009)

As I understand it, the 'thousands' is supposed to happen by sharding virtual copies of the space in which only a set number of avatars can be at one time - any excess get shunted to a new shard. ❋ Bettina Tizzy (2009)

It uses Stackless Python extensively and, uniquely, runs in a single instance – no sharding, everyone plays in the same virtual world. ❋ Unknown (2006)