Replication vs sharding
People often confuse replication with sharding. While both are sets of systems utilized in database management, they serve distinct purposes and are employed for different reasons. Replication is a process where data is duplicated and stored in multiple locations to ensure redundancy and reliability, playing a vital role in data protection and accessibility.
On the other hand, sharding involves dividing a larger database into smaller, more manageable parts, called shards. Each shard stores a portion of the total dataset on a separate database server instance. However, it's important to note that each shard must also implement replication to maintain data integrity and availability.
The goal of combining sharding with replication is to ensure data durability and high availability. When a shard's server instance fails and there's only a single copy of data on that shard, it can result in unavailability of data until the server is restored...
