US Patent 9235611 Data growth balancing

A distributed database management system maintains logical collections of data. The collections may grow at varying rates, and may place storage and workload processing demands on the system that change over time. A value representative of the current maximum of capacity utilization for computing nodes in the system may be calculated. An estimate of the number of days for each computing node to reach the current maximum may be calculated, and compared to an average number of days. Computing nodes whose number of days is above the average may be selected to receive new logical collections of data.