Sharded and nonsharded environments

Traditional, nonsharded environments use application clustering. Using sharded environments can increase business value by providing near infinite scalability by splitting similar data into multiple database instances.

Traditionally, applications are deployed through application clustering, however, databases can scale vertically to a certain degree. Sharding is provided based on various criteria, such as stores and enterprises. Sharding separates large databases into smaller, more easily managed parts called database shards that can be spread across multiple database servers. Users can manage sharding related configuration, such as database connection information and colony definitions, using SMA user interface.