Create a database for scalability

Question

I know this sounds like a programming question which means it should be on stackoverflow but i believe server admins worry about this more and i am not looking for just the programming answer to this question.

How do i create a database for scalability? I am in the middle of http://www.slideshare.net/vishnu/livejournals-backend-a-history-of-scaling which i cant read ATM and need to leave. But i would like to know more about creating a database that scales well. Somethings that it mentioned and occur in my mind are

Separate handles for reads and writes?
What happens when one server is busy (IO or CPU bound) and i need two servers to write to?
Do i create multiple database? have a clusterId on users?
Will it be a problem when moving users to one cluster to another?
Might i code this so user ABC in DB A on cluster A and DEF in DB B in cluster B have the same PRIMARY KEY?
When i move the above to cluster C? Does this mean i need to write much code to move them to another cluster/database?
To make the above not an issue would i NOT use PRIMARY KEY and set the ID by hand by reading the other DBs on other clusters?

etc

I'm curious to know if the answer(s) would vary based on RDBMS chosen — warren, Nov 29 '09 at 13:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 10 '09 at 18:24

1

I believe what you might be looking for is called database sharding. I don't know anything about it as we have been able to keep WAY ahead of demand just through hardware updates.

answered Nov 10 '09 at 18:24

Bob Martens

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Sharding was the first thing that came to mind for me as well. – petertonoli Jan 01 '10 at 01:10

Create a database for scalability

1 Answers1