You may want to speed up database accesses by replicating your database across several machines so that they can serve clients independently. Replication is easy if the data is static, i.e., catalogs, texts, libraries of images, etc. Replication is hard if the database is often updated as it would be with active clients. However, you can sidestep replication by dividing your client database into chunks (for instance, by surname: A-D, E-G,...etc.), each served by a single machine. To increase speed, you divide it smaller and add more hardware.