We're looking to set up data centers globally and switch to a NoSQL database like MongoDB to support having our data distributed over these data centers (and as a pleasant side effect, introduce more redundancy, failover etc).
However, the reason for global data centers is primarily to speed response times for our users in nearby countries, rather than the failover features. The web application is designed to be used on a company scale, and few of these companies operate on a global scale. As such, as many users on one side of the world will never need to access data from those users on the other side, it would be nice if the data could be kept on the servers that are local to the majority of the users.
I had hoped that I could use the sharding features of mongodb to have the data distributed globally like this, while still allowing for access and maintenance from a single location (which would be slow, and query the international servers). Unfortunately, the only reference I can find to this type of behavior is a mention of "intelligent homing" on a MongoDB blog bost and nothing else. While it would be possible to just sync everything globally, it seems rather inefficient and unmetered bandwidth isn't an option in at least one of the countries.
Can mongodb support this kind of behavior? Any further information on how to get this kind of set up working (or why I should not get this set up working as it'll make kittens die etc) would be much appreciated.
