Pages tagged shard:

Adding Simplicity - An Engineering Mantra: Shard Lessons
http://www.addsimplicity.com/adding_simplicity_an_engi/2008/08/shard-lessons.html

No, not SHARED lessons, I mean SHARD lessons. I have to admit that until about a year ago I didn't really know the term shards in relation to databases. Now don't confuse that with not understanding how databases can be horizontally scaled. I was introduced to that concept and helped to define the various ways it can be done but we just called it splits. Regardless of what you call it, there are some interesting challenges that are introduced. The well known challenges of consistency are discussed ad nauseam, even by me, so I'm not going there with this article. But besides that, there are some other lessons to learn when applying the pattern to your data.
Worth reading just for the section on intelligently designing shard counts. Great discussion on picking counts that smooth your cost step function