In MongoDB, the sh.shardCollection command is used to shard a collection across multiple shards in a sharded cluster. Sharding is a technique used to horizontally partition data across multiple servers or shards to improve performance and scalability. While the sh.shardCollection command is typically used in a MongoDB shell, we will explore how to use it in a Linux environment.

To use the sh.shardCollection command in Linux, you need to have the MongoDB shell installed on your system. The MongoDB shell is a JavaScript interface to MongoDB that allows you to interact with the database from the command line.

Once you have the MongoDB shell installed, you can open a terminal and launch the MongoDB shell by running the following command:

mongo

This will start the MongoDB shell and connect to the default MongoDB server running on your local machine.

To shard a collection using the sh.shardCollection command, you need to specify the database name, collection name, and the shard key. The shard key is the field or fields that determine how data is distributed across shards.

Here's an example of how to shard a collection named "myCollection" in the "myDatabase" database using the "sh.shardCollection" command:

sh.shardCollection("myDatabase.myCollection", { "shardKeyField": 1 })

In this example, "myDatabase" is the name of the database, "myCollection" is the name of the collection, and "shardKeyField" is the field in the collection that will be used as the shard key. The value "1" indicates that the field should be sorted in ascending order.

Once you run the "sh.shardCollection" command, MongoDB will distribute the data in the collection across multiple shards based on the shard key.