I ntroducon to MemSQL Database Parons and Sharding When a user creates a database in MemSQL, it is always paroned (a minimum of 2 parons). As seen below , a database is a sum of all of its parons. Parons reside on the leaf nodes. Figure 11. Using leaf nodes as parons with MemSQL Each paron in-itself is implemented as a database on a leaf. When a sharded table is created, it is split according to the number of parons of its encapsulang database. Each paron will hold a slice of the table. Figure 12. Leveraging shard keys for distributed tables 18