# Large number of tables **URL:** \ **Category:** CrateDB\ **Created:** [May 9, 2023, 6:28pm UTC](https://community.cratedb.com/t/large-number-of-tables/1475 "2023-05-09T18:28:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![vincepell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a6a055/32.png) [@vincepell](https://community.cratedb.com/u/vincepell)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2023, 6:28pm UTC](https://community.cratedb.com/t/large-number-of-tables/1475/1 "2023-05-09T18:28:21Z")
I have a use case where the customer requires data to be stored in separate tables. Each table is dynamically created and eventually deleted after a week or so. As a result, there are typically ~20000 tables in the system at any given time. I know that this is not good database design, but, for various reasons, it cannot be changed. My question is: If CrateDB is clustered and the data is not sharded or partitioned, will it spread the tables tables across the cluster rather than putting all the tables on the a single node. Each table is not that big ~100000 rows ---
**Author:** ![hernanc](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/community.cratedb.com/hernanc/32/676_2.png) [@hernanc](https://community.cratedb.com/u/hernanc)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2023, 7:16am UTC](https://community.cratedb.com/t/large-number-of-tables/1475/2 "2023-05-10T07:16:53Z")
Hi, Different tables will be on different shards, so CrateDB will spread the tables across the cluster, but please review [Sharding and partitioning guide for time-series data - Tutorials - CrateDB Community](https://community.cratedb.com/t/sharding-and-partitioning-guide-for-time-series-data/737) In particular we recommend a maximum of 1000 shards per node so for 20 thousand tables you would be looking at 20 nodes minimum. 2 other approaches you may want to consider are: - if the tables can be grouped in some way you may want to have multiple CrateDB clusters instead of a single one with so many tables - perhaps you could combine data in less tables but present it as if it were on separate “tables” using views?