Considerations

There are some considerations to keep in mind while planning for a deployment.

Introduction to sharding
Sharding separates large databases into smaller, more easily managed parts called database shards that can be spread across multiple database servers.
Business Intelligence reporting in a sharded deployment
provides query, analysis, and report capability, and offers data sources based on shard type: Configuration, Metadata, Master, and Transaction data.
Colony and shard management
A default colony is always created when you install the application. You can use the Manage Colony tool to create additional colonies.

Parent topic: Sharded and nonsharded deployments