Can you explain the concept of data sharding in data storage systems?

Sharding is a method of horizontal partitioning of data in a database or storage system into parts (shards), each stored separately, usually on different servers.

The goal of sharding is to increase scalability and performance by distributing load and data volume across multiple nodes.

For example, if you have a user database, you can split users by the first letter of their last name: users with last names starting with "A" on one server, "B" on another, and so on. When a request comes, the system determines which shard to access.

This allows handling more requests in parallel and reduces load on individual nodes, but requires additional routing logic and data integrity management.