When you install SkyVault Community Edition 5.2 using the setup wizard, it enables you to set up a machine and an index server to be used for sharding. For more information, see Installing using setup wizards.
As shown in the diagram below, the trackers communicate with the repository. When the user initiates a query, it is executed by manually mapping the stores (explicit configuration).
The query is sent to Solr and then to the request handler. The request handler determines if the query is local or distributed. In case of distributed query, the query is sent to other parts of the index and then combined into an overall result.
The distributed query is done is two phases. Phase 1 involves query and an initial round of faceting, and Phase 2 involves pulling back information from each relevant document and facet refinement.
To create shards using manual configuration, see Creating Solr shards manually.