Comment by markandrewj

Cassandra was just an example, but most databases can be scaled either vertically or horizontally via sharding. You are right if misconfigured performance can be hindered, but this is also true for a database which is being scaled vertically. Generally speaking you will get better performance if you have a large dataset by growing horizontally then you would by growing vertically.

https://stackoverflow.blog/2022/03/14/how-sharding-a-databas...