# Concepts

The **Concepts** section explains various aspects related to Weaviate and its architecture to help you get the most out of it. You can read these sections in any order.

:::callout{intent="info" title="Quickstart"}
If you are after a practical guide with code examples, check out the [quickstart tutorial](../quickstart/index.md).
:::

:::card{title="Key Concepts & Architecture" href="https://academy.weaviate.io/courses/wa050-py" cover="/img/docs/weaviate-academy-purple.png"}
Become familiar with Weaviate's architecture, core concepts, and key capabilities. Understand how its features and integrations map to AI builders' needs.
:::

## Core concepts

**[Data structure](../concepts/data.md)**

- How Weaviate deals with data objects, including how they are stored, represented, and linked to each other.

**[Modules](../concepts/modules.md)**

- An overview of Weaviate's module system, including what can be done with modules, existing module types, and custom modules.

**[Indexing](../indexing/index.md)**

- Read how data is indexed within Weaviate using inverted and ANN indexes, and about configurable settings.

**[Vector indexing](../indexing/vector-index.md)**

- Read more about Weaviate's vector indexing architecture, such as the HNSW algorithm, distance metrics, and configurable settings.

**[Vector quantization](../concepts/vector-quantization.md)**

- Read more about Weaviate's vector quantization options.

## Weaviate Architecture

The figure below gives a 30,000 feet view of Weaviate's architecture.

[![Weaviate module APIs overview](/assets/docs/weaviate/concepts/img/weaviate-architecture-overview.svg "Weaviate System and Architecture Overview")](/assets/docs/weaviate/concepts/img/weaviate-architecture-overview.svg)

You can learn more about the individual components in this figure by following these guides:

**[Learn about storage inside a shard](../concepts/storage.md)**

- How Weaviate stores data
- How Weaviate makes writes durable
- How an inverted index, a vector index and an object store interact with each other

**[Ways to scale Weaviate horizontally](../concepts/cluster.md)**

- Different motivations to scale
- Sharding vs. Replication
- Configuring a cluster
- Consistency

**[How to plan resources](../concepts/resources.md)**

- The roles of CPU, Memory and GPUs
- How to size a cluster correctly
- Speeding up specific processes
- Preventing bottlenecks

**[Filtered vector search](../concepts/filtering.md)**

- Combine vector search with filters
- Learn how combining an HNSW with an inverted index leads to high-recall, high-speed filtered queries

**[User-facing interfaces](../concepts/interface.md)**

- Design philosophy behind user-facing APIs
- Role of the REST and GraphQL APIs

**[Replication architecture](../replication-architecture/index.md)**

- About replication
- Weaviate's implementation
- Use cases

## Questions and feedback

Have a question or feedback? Here's how to reach us.

::::card-grid
:::card{title="Community Forum" href="https://forum.weaviate.io/c/support" icon="messages-square"}
Ask questions and connect with other developers on our **Community forum**.
:::

:::card{title="Support" href="/guides/support-overview" icon="life-buoy"}
Weaviate Cloud user or customer? Find the right channel on the **Support page**.
:::
::::

## Related pages

- [Agents](./agents-index.md)
- [AI-assisted Weaviate code generation](./ai-assisted-vibe-coding-index.md)
- [APIs](./apis-index.md)
- [Authorization and authentication](./authorization-and-authentication-index.md)
- [Benchmarks](./benchmarks-index.md)
- [Best practices](./best-practices-index.md)
- [Client libraries](./clients-index.md)
- [Client Libraries / SDKs](./client-libraries-index.md)
- [Cloud](./cloud-index.md)
- [Cloud account management](./cloud-account-management-index.md)

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