Migrate a 6TB Social-Commerce Database to a Sharded Topology
Overview
What this challenge is about.
Migrate a 6TB social-commerce database to a sharded topology with a Go router. Get a verifiable certificate.
The scenario
The company is a Brazilian social-commerce platform where creators and shoppers post, follow, and buy in one feed; its monolithic PostgreSQL primary now absorbs every write from feed activity, carts, and checkout, and that single write path is the binding constraint on growth.
The Brief
What you'll do, and what you'll demonstrate.
Design and prototype a 16-shard PostgreSQL topology with a routing layer and a six-month dual-write migration path that requires no maintenance windows.
Earning criteria — what you'll demonstrate
- Derive shard-key decisions from measured query workload instead of assumed access patterns.
- Identify tables unsuited to a user-based shard key and choose between global replication and a separate unsharded service.
- Implement a routing layer that correctly handles cross-shard fan-out, result merging, and shard failover.
- Plan a zero-downtime migration using dual-writes and read-shadowing with per-phase rollback safety.
- Size a sharded topology against real capacity metrics and defend the headroom.
Program Fit
Where this fits in your program.
Sharpens the same skills your degree expects you to demonstrate.
Aligned coursework coming soon.
Skills
Skills you'll demonstrate.
Each one shows up on your verified credential.
- Database Sharding
Apply database sharding to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Postgresql
Apply postgresql to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Vitess
Apply vitess to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Dual Write Migration
Apply dual write migration to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Capacity Planning
Apply capacity planning to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
- Schema Design
Apply schema design to solve real industry problems and demonstrate production-level capability.
Careers
Career paths this challenge builds toward
Completing this challenge demonstrates skills that transfer directly to these roles:
Senior Database Administrator
Running a real sharding migration on evidence rather than assumption mirrors the senior DBA's core job: defending topology decisions to engineering leadership and owning a zero-downtime cutover end to end.
This challenge sharpens
- database-sharding
- postgresql
- dual-write-migration
Database Reliability Engineer
Designing per-phase rollback gates and read-shadow verification under a live write ceiling is exactly the reliability-engineering remit of keeping a high-traffic datastore available while it changes shape underneath production.
This challenge sharpens
- capacity-planning
- dual-write-migration
- postgresql
Data Platform Engineer
Building a routing layer that abstracts shard topology from application code is the foundational platform-engineering skill of giving product teams a stable data interface over a distributed backend.
This challenge sharpens
- vitess
- schema-design
- database-sharding