Database Sharding Strategies

The cluster focuses on debates around database sharding for multi-tenant SaaS applications, comparing single large databases, per-tenant schemas or instances, and hybrid approaches for scaling and isolation.

📉 Falling 0.4x Databases
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Keywords

RAM B2B JOIN DB e.g CRDB HASH hash.html AWS PG db database tenant server separate mysql single databases dbs data

Sample Comments

SoftTalker Dec 21, 2025 View on HN

Give each business or customer its own schema and you almost never need sharding.

kgeist Sep 16, 2024 View on HN

You mean it's easier to shard databases per tenant when it's a monolith?

killingtime74 Jan 23, 2026 View on HN

Why a single postgres? Why not shard by users?

endisneigh Dec 11, 2022 View on HN

Using a sharded database is not just for scale.

encoderer Oct 1, 2025 View on HN

99% of apps never need to shard data. Probably closer to 99.9% if they are single tenant.

CuriouslyC Jan 24, 2026 View on HN

Not if you're sharding correctly.

markjkowalski Oct 8, 2017 View on HN

Isn't that what sharded databases do?

pietherr Aug 31, 2020 View on HN

You shard for load distribution. If data isolation is #1 priority, use separate tables, schemas, database instances.

Axsuul Jun 25, 2020 View on HN

Very likely a monolith database (the sharding gives it away) that uses a multi-tenant architecture (`WHERE account_id = ?`)

js4ever Dec 29, 2021 View on HN

It's not really an issue if you have 1 db per customer