--- /dev/null
+/*
+ * Copyright (c) 2015 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. and others. All rights reserved.
+ *
+ * This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
+ * terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0 which accompanies this distribution,
+ * and is available at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
+ */
+package org.opendaylight.controller.cluster.datastore;
+
+import akka.actor.Props;
+import java.util.Map;
+import org.opendaylight.controller.cluster.datastore.identifiers.ShardIdentifier;
+import org.opendaylight.yangtools.yang.model.api.SchemaContext;
+
+/**
+ * An interface for creating a Shard actor Props instance.
+ *
+ * @author Thomas Pantelis
+ */
+public interface ShardPropsCreator {
+
+ Props newProps(ShardIdentifier shardId, Map<String, String> peerAddresses, DatastoreContext datastoreContext,
+ SchemaContext schemaContext);
+}