The process of setting up the distributed database environment involves a thorough analysis and design. A review of ongoing and future information maintenance should be made, if it needs a synchronous (information across all the nodes should be kept in sync all the time) or asynchronous (information is replicated at multiple nodes to make it available for other nodes, instead of accessing through the network when it is required) setup.

Once the analysis for a specific distributed database environment is made, the setup can be performed in one of the following ways:

• Replication
• Horizontal partitioning
• Vertical partitioning
• Hybrid setup