Database Management Systems · Distributed systems

Replication and sharding

Copying data across machines for redundancy versus splitting it across machines for scale.

Also known as: horizontal partitioning, replica sets.

Start a lesson on Replication and sharding

Learn first

• Distributed databases: A database whose data lives across multiple machines instead of one.

Related topics

• CAP theorem: You can't have perfect consistency, availability, and partition tolerance all at once, pick two.
• Consistency models: How strictly a distributed database insists every read sees the latest write, versus allowing some staleness.