MySQL sharding approaches?

Question

What is the best approach for Sharding MySQL tables. The approaches I can think of are :

1. Application Level sharding?
2. Sharding at MySQL proxy layer?

Answer 1

Application level of course.

Best approach I've ever red I've found in this book

High Performance MySQL http://www.amazon.com/High-Performance-MySQL-Jeremy-Zawodny/dp/0596003064

Short description: you could split your data in many parts and store ~50 part on each server. It will help you to avoid the second biggest problem of sharding - rebalancing. Just move some of them to the new server and everything will be fine :)

I strongly recommend you to buy it and read "mysql scaling" part.