# FAQ
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## What about shuffle-sharding?
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 A question often asked is whether shuffle-sharding is the same as cell-based or how they are related. Although shuffle-sharding is an excellent fault-isolating mechanism, they are not the same thing. The basic idea of shuffle-sharding is to generate shards as we might deal hands from a deck of cards. Take the eight instances example. Previously, we divided it into four shards of two instances. With shuffle-sharding, the shards contain two random instances, and the shards, just like our hands of cards, might have some overlap. 

![\[Diagram showing shuffle-sharding.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/reducing-scope-of-impact-with-cell-based-architecture/images/shuffle-sharding.png)


 In a cell-based architecture, a cell should be self-contained, not share its state. We can use shuffle-sharding within a cell, but cross-cells should not be used by definition. Shuffle-sharding can also be a bit trickier for stateful components. To learn more about shuffle-sharding, here are two great articles: 
+  [Workload isolation using shuffle-sharding](https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/workload-isolation-using-shuffle-sharding/) 
+  [Shuffle Sharding: Massive and Magical Fault Isolation](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/shuffle-sharding-massive-and-magical-fault-isolation/)