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Shard a Collection

On this page

  • Shard Key Fields and Values
  • Missing Shard Key Fields
  • Change a Document's Shard Key Value
  • Change a Collection's Shard Key

Note

To shard a collection, you need to enable sharding.

To shard a collection, you must specify the full namespace of the collection that you want to shard and the shard key. You can use the mongosh method sh.shardCollection() to shard a collection:

sh.shardCollection(<namespace>, <key>) // Optional parameters omitted
namespace
Specify the full namespace of the collection that you want to shard ("<database>.<collection>").
key

Specify a document { <shard key field1>: <1|"hashed">, ... } where

For more information on the sharding method, see sh.shardCollection().

Documents in sharded collections can be missing the shard key fields. A missing shard key falls into the same range as a null-valued shard key. See Missing Shard Key Fields.

You can update a document's shard key value unless the shard key field is the immutable _id field.

For details on updating the shard key value, see Change a Document's Shard Key Value.

Starting in MongoDB 5.0, you can reshard a collection by changing a document's shard key.

You can refine a shard key by adding a suffix field or fields to the existing shard key.

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Shard Keys