What methods are used to increase throughput and horizontal scaling of distributed database systems?

The following methods are used to increase throughput and horizontally scale distributed database systems:

• Sharding — dividing data into parts (shards) stored on different servers. This allows parallel processing of requests to different shards.
• Replication — creating copies of data on multiple nodes to distribute read load and improve fault tolerance.
• Load balancing — distributing requests among nodes for optimal resource utilization.
• Caching — using intermediate storage layers for quick access to frequently requested data.
• Using asynchronous operations and message queues to offload the database during peak loads.

These methods are often combined to achieve maximum performance and scalability.