Migrating to TiDB Cloud for Scalability and Enhanced Analytics with Zero-downtime

ELESTYLE  is a Japanese fintech company that offers a multi-payment service platform that lets users make cashless purchases using a single QR code. With ELESTYLE’s platform, OneQR, users can choose from various payment methods, such as Merpay, Line Pay, au PAY, and Rakuten Pay with just one click. In addition, the company provides a comprehensive platform called elepay that delivers APIs and SDKs tailored for payment service applications. This makes it a popular choice for businesses who want to integrate cashless payment options.

The problem: ELESTYLE’s database couldn’t keep up with rapid growth

ELESTYLE has grown exponentially in recent years, increasing revenue more than 500% in 2022. As the company’s business grew, the transaction volume of its payment services increased. This made it hard for its database—Amazon Aurora—to keep up with the ever-growing data workload. The challenges it faced included:

• Downtime during upgrades: Amazon Aurora required planned downtime for instance changes or version upgrades. This impacted ELESTYLE’s clients, who rely on continuous availability for payment services such as vending machines and unattended parking payment systems. Even if the company could plan the downtime, the service interruption would still happen. 
• Scalability bottleneck: In the second half of 2022, as the payment processing load and volume increased significantly, Amazon Aurora exceeded 60% of its designed capacity. ELESTYLE needed a higher-performing database that could easily scale to accommodate the growing demand.
• Frequent database changes and upgrades: As long as ELESTYLE used Amazon Aurora, future instance changes or upgrades were inevitable. This posed the risk of more planned downtime. 

These challenges prompted ELESTYLE to search for a more scalable and zero-downtime database solution.

The solution: Migrating to TiDB Cloud for scalability with zero-downtime

ELESTYLE decided to migrate from Amazon Aurora to TiDB Cloud, PingCAP’s fully-managed Database as a Service (DBaaS) that operates on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud (GCP). Powering TiDB Cloud is TiDB, an advanced, open source, distributed SQL database that allows for elastic scaling, real-time analytics, and continuous access to data. The company’s reasons for choosing TiDB Cloud include:

• Zero downtime: TiDB Cloud supports zero-downtime operations, including scale-up and version upgrades—a key requirement for ELESTYLE.
• Scalability: TiDB’s distributed SQL database architecture scales easily. This means you can add or delete instances as needs change. This is a perfect fit for ELESTYLE’s write-intensive workloads. 
• MySQL compatibility: TiDB Cloud is wire-compatible with MySQL, so it’s easier to transition from MySQL databases such as Amazon Aurora. 
• Strong customer service: As ELESTYLE migrated their data to TiDB Cloud, they collaborated with PingCAP to create and review the database migration plan while conducting simulation tests. 
  

With PingCAP’s assistance, ELESTYLE started migrating their data in September 2022 and finished in December 2022 with minimal downtime.

TiDB Cloud’s enhanced data analytics

Not only did TiDB Cloud have the scalability and zero-downtime ELESTYLE needed, it also offered real-time data analytics. TiDB’s Hybrid Transactional and Analytical Processing (HTAP) capabilities efficiently process complex queries of mixed workloads. This means greater developer productivity, a simplified architecture, and real-time data aggregation.

When ELESTYLE used Amazon Aurora, they had to operate a separate data warehouse and synchronize data for analytics. TiDB provides efficient complex query processing of mixed workloads with a real-time columnar storage extension, TiFlash. This allows ELESTYLE to analyze data in real time without the need for synchronization.

Moreover, TiDB Cloud’s experimental feature, Chat2Query, allows users unfamiliar with SQL to query databases using natural language questions. ELESTYLE CEO Lu has high expectations for this functionality, which will enable more flexible database querying for their customers. Adopted as the database infrastructure supporting the company’s payment services, TiDB Cloud has not only met the requirements for performance and availability, but is also highly expected for future development.

The results

ELESTYLE’s migration to TiDB Cloud has greatly improved their growing multi-payment service platform. These key benefits include:

• Scalability: TiDB Cloud allows ELESTYLE to handle increasing transaction volume without worrying about planned downtime or upgrading to higher-performance instances.
• Zero downtime: TiDB Cloud enables seamless scale-up and version upgrades, ensuring uninterrupted service for ELESTYLE’s clients.
• Real-time analytics: TiDB Cloud’s distributed processing and optional TiFlash component eliminate the need for separate data warehouses and provide real-time reporting.
• Streamlined query processing: The experimental Chat2Query feature allows users without SQL knowledge to perform flexible queries using natural language, making the system more accessible and user-friendly.

Thanks to TiDB Cloud, ELESTYLE can now focus on providing a seamless payment experience to its clients and support its rapidly growing business with a powerful, flexible, and reliable database infrastructure.