[Yandex Cloud documentation](../../index.md) > [Monium](../index.md) > Concepts > Object configuration

# Monium object configuration

To logically separate telemetry data, Monium uses configuration objects: project, cluster, service, and shard.

```mermaid
flowchart TB
  subgraph P["**Project** (collection of interconnected resources)"]
    direction TB

    subgraph C1["Production cluster (environment)"]
      direction TB
        direction LR
        S1["Service 1<br>(application)"]
        S2["Service 2"]
    end

    subgraph C2["Test cluster"]
      direction TB
        direction LR
        S3["Service 3"]
    end

    subgraph SH["Shards (define data storage rules)"]
      direction LR
      SH1[Shard 1.1]
      SH2[Shard 1.2]
      SH3[Shard 2]
      SH4[Shard 3]
    end

    S1 -.->|telemetry| SH1
    S1 -.->| | SH2
    S2 -.->| | SH3
    S3 -.->| | SH4
  end
```

* _Project_: Top-level logical entity. You can use projects to aggregate telemetry from associated applications and microservices and restrict data access for development teams. Some examples include an online store, billing system, or security services.

* _Cluster_: Allows you to isolate an environment or independent service installations, e.g., production and test clusters, clusters in different regions.

* _Service_: Standalone client application generating telemetry data. This may be a microservice or its component, e.g., Nginx, Envoy, or Compute Cloud VM instance.

* _Shard_: Container for data of a specific _service-cluster_ pair and data storage settings, e.g., [TTL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_live).

The project, cluster, and service objects define the data source, and the shard defines the storage rules.