Adding Shards for an Instance (Distributed)

Scenarios

As the instance deployment time and data increase, the database performance and storage will gradually reach the bottleneck. In this case, you need to add hosts to improve the instance performance and storage capability. This function is available only for distributed GaussDB instances that are deployed independently.

Precautions

The scaling duration depends on the amount of data. The default timeout period is seven days. When an instance is being scaled out, the instance is available, but you are not allowed to perform other operations on the console. If you need to perform any operations, submit a service ticket.
Instances can be scaled out only when they are in the Available state. When shards are being added, you can still query and insert data, query services are not interrupted, and the data insertion performance is not affected. The performance of join queries on local tables across node groups during redistribution may be affected.
You can add up to 64 shards at a time, but the system supports no more than 256 shards in total.

Billing

Billing Mode	Impact on Fees
Yearly/Monthly	After a shard is added, you will be billed for the new shard based on the time remaining in the requested period of your instance. You need to pay for the difference in price based on the remaining period. Example (The prices below are for reference only. The actual prices are displayed on the console.) Suppose you purchased a one-month, enterprise-edition distributed instance of V2.0-8.210 (configurations: 3 shards, 3 replicas, 3 CNs; instance specifications: dedicated, 8 vCPUs \| 64 GB; storage: ultra-high I/O, 120 GB) on June 1, 2025. The instance price was $19,752 USD/month. On June 15, 2025, you added a shard for the instance, which was priced at $4,944 USD/month. Price difference = Fee of the new shard x Remaining period The remaining period in the formula is the number of remaining days in each calendar month divided by the maximum number of days in the calendar month. In this example, the remaining period and price difference are calculated as follows: Remaining period = 15 (Remaining days in June)/30 (Maximum number of days in June) = 0.5 Price difference = 4944 x 0.5 = $2,472 USD
Pay-per-use	Added shards are billed by the hour. For details, see Product Pricing Details.

Billing Mode

Impact on Fees

Yearly/Monthly

After a shard is added, you will be billed for the new shard based on the time remaining in the requested period of your instance.

You need to pay for the difference in price based on the remaining period.

Example (The prices below are for reference only. The actual prices are displayed on the console.)

Suppose you purchased a one-month, enterprise-edition distributed instance of V2.0-8.210 (configurations: 3 shards, 3 replicas, 3 CNs; instance specifications: dedicated, 8 vCPUs | 64 GB; storage: ultra-high I/O, 120 GB) on June 1, 2025. The instance price was $19,752 USD/month.

On June 15, 2025, you added a shard for the instance, which was priced at $4,944 USD/month.

Price difference = Fee of the new shard x Remaining period

The remaining period in the formula is the number of remaining days in each calendar month divided by the maximum number of days in the calendar month.

In this example, the remaining period and price difference are calculated as follows:

Remaining period = 15 (Remaining days in June)/30 (Maximum number of days in June) = 0.5
Price difference = 4944 x 0.5 = $2,472 USD

Pay-per-use

Added shards are billed by the hour. For details, see Product Pricing Details.

Procedure

Log in to the management console.
Click in the upper left corner and select a region and project.
Click in the upper left corner of the page and choose Databases > GaussDB.
On the Instances page, click the name of the target instance.
On the Basic Information page, click Add in the Shards field.

Figure 1 Adding shards
Specify the number of shards to be added. Click Next.

Figure 2 Adding shards
Confirm the information and then click Submit.

By default, a shard contains three replicas (a primary DN and two standby DNs). Each time you add a shard, three replicas will be added.
Check the result.

On the Instances page, check that the instance is in the Adding shards state during the scale-out. After the instance status changes to Available, click the instance name. On the Basic Information page, check that the number of shards matches the required quantity.