# Index sharding in ClickHouse Cloud: Petabyte-scale data needs petabyte-scale indexing

DevFeed: [Index sharding in ClickHouse Cloud: Petabyte-scale data needs petabyte-scale indexing](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/index-sharding-in-clickhouse-cloud-petabyte-scale-data-needs-petabyte-scale-indexing-5314.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://clickhouse.com/blog/index-sharding-clickhouse-cloud-petabyte-scale-indexing>)

Author: James Cunningham

Published: 2026-04-21T13:31:26Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [ClickHouse Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/clickhouse-blog.md>)

Topics: [clickhouse](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/clickhouse.md>), [Cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cloud.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>)

Tags: [analysis](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/analysis.md>), [clickhouse](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/clickhouse.md>), [cloud](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cloud.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [memory](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/memory.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [resource](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/resource.md>), [scale](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scale.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>)

## AI overview

ClickHouse Cloud introduces index sharding, distributing primary and secondary index analysis across replicas. This reduces per-replica memory usage and accelerates index analysis for petabyte-scale workloads, with tests reporting up to 7.7x faster analysis on a 50-billion-row table.

## Source excerpt

ClickHouse Cloud now shards indexes across replicas, turning a fixed per-node memory cost into a shared distributed resource. The result: lower memory usage, faster index analysis, and better performance for petabyte-scale workloads.