If you have more data than, say, GDBM, can swallow in one bite, how could you break this data apart and then find the right chunk amongst multiple servers when given a key?

Also, what does the interviewer mean by this:

> I generally ask these folks if they think the problem of looking up a key by value has been solved before, especially given the two weeks to be live in production requirement.

Is that a typo? s/key by value/value by key/ ?