--- title: Unlock Massive Scale for AI and Traditional Workloads:... description: Couchbase Server 8.0+ introduces the Shard Dealer, an automated system for managing secondary index placement across distributed clusters. It solves the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/unlock-massive-scale-for-ai-and-traditional-workloads-meet-the-couchbase-secondary-index-shard-deal-nooco6hip twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Unlock Massive Scale for AI and Traditional Workloads: Meet the Couchbase Secondary Index Shard Dealer | daily.dev og:description: Couchbase Server 8.0+ introduces the Shard Dealer, an automated system for managing secondary index placement across distributed clusters. It solves the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/unlock-massive-scale-for-ai-and-traditional-workloads-meet-the-couchbase-secondary-index-shard-deal-nooco6hip og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/NOOCo6hIp.png og:image:alt: Unlock Massive Scale for AI and Traditional Workloads: Meet the Couchbase Secondary Index Shard Dealer og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Unlock Massive Scale for AI and Traditional Workloads: Meet the Couchbase Secondary Index Shard Dealer **[Couchbase](https://daily.dev/sources/couchbase)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Couchbase Server 8.0+ introduces the Shard Dealer, an automated system for managing secondary index placement across distributed clusters. It solves the 'Goldilocks problem' of shard count by dynamically scaling from 10–40 shards on small clusters to 600–2,000 on large ones. A multi-pass algorithm handles placement decisions, prioritizing reuse of under-capacity shards before creating new ones. Critically, the system enforces workload isolation by keeping traditional indexes and vector indexes in separate shards, preventing AI workloads from impacting standard query performance. Replica alignment is also maintained to speed up failover and recovery. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Index sharding in ClickHouse Cloud: Petabyte-scale data needs petabyte-scale indexing](https://daily.dev/posts/index-sharding-in-clickhouse-cloud-petabyte-scale-data-needs-petabyte-scale-indexing-m9incx91i) · ClickHouse · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Making 768 servers look like 1 — PlanetScale](https://daily.dev/posts/making-768-servers-look-like-1-planetscale-2dvlb3eoz) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Scale without limits: introducing sharding & replication in Meilisearch Cloud](https://daily.dev/posts/scale-without-limits-introducing-sharding-replication-in-meilisearch-cloud-dtc25sspc) · Meilisearch · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#database](https://daily.dev/tags/database), [#vector-search](https://daily.dev/tags/vector-search), [#couchbase](https://daily.dev/tags/couchbase) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/unlock-massive-scale-for-ai-and-traditional-workloads-meet-the-couchbase-secondary-index-shard-deal-nooco6hip) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Unlock Massive Scale for AI and Traditional Workloads: Meet the Couchbase Secondary Index Shard Dealer","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/unlock-massive-scale-for-ai-and-traditional-workloads-meet-the-couchbase-secondary-index-shard-deal-nooco6hip","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/unlock-massive-scale-for-ai-and-traditional-workloads-meet-the-couchbase-secondary-index-shard-deal-nooco6hip"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T07:51:55.163Z","dateModified":"2026-07-09T07:53:45.074Z","description":"Couchbase Server 8.0+ introduces the Shard Dealer, an automated system for managing secondary index placement across distributed clusters. 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