Sharding and partitioning are both about breaking up a large data set into smaller subsets. The difference is that sharding implies the data is spread across multiple computers while partitioning does not. Partitioning is about grouping subsets of data within a single database instance.

Is sharding horizontal partitioning?

A database shard, or simply a shard, is a horizontal partition of data in a database or search engine. Each shard is held on a separate database server instance, to spread load. Some data within a database remains present in all shards, but some appears only in a single shard.

What is the difference between sharding and replication?

What is the difference between replication and sharding? Replication: The primary server node copies data onto secondary server nodes. ... This means that rather than copying data holistically, sharding copies pieces of the data (or “shards”) across multiple replica sets.