MongoDB Sharding and Horizontal Scaling
Quick Answer
MongoDB uses sharding to horizontally scale databases by distributing data across multiple servers called shards. This approach allows handling large datasets and high traffic by splitting data based on shard keys, improving performance and availability.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the concept of horizontal scaling in MongoDB using sharding.
- Identify the components of a MongoDB sharded cluster.
- Learn how shard keys influence data distribution and query performance.
Introduction
As data grows, scaling databases vertically becomes costly and limited. Horizontal scaling distributes data across multiple servers to handle increased load.
MongoDB implements horizontal scaling through sharding, which partitions data into smaller chunks stored on different servers.
Scale out, not just up.





