Why MySQL Can’t Scale With You

MySQL’s monolithic architecture runs on a single server where query processing, transaction management, and storage are tightly coupled within a single node.

Scaling out this architecture is difficult because MySQL wasn’t built to natively distribute data across multiple nodes. Most teams rely on replication or manual sharding workarounds that add complexity and limit scalability.

Lost Developer Productivity

Lost Developer Productivity

Tedious workarounds shift developers away from building features to fixing database gaps

Increased Business Risk

Increased Business Risk

Homemade, purpose-built solutions increase the chances of system failures while adding complexity

Rising Operational Costs

Rising Operational Costs

Database sprawl eats into profits that could be better invested in growing the business

How Teams Use TiDB to Scale MySQL Workloads

TiDB is built to help teams evolve from managing databases to scaling intelligently across any workload. TiDB serves as the ideal distributed database to power applications and businesses across fintech, retail & e-commerce, SaaS, AI, gaming, and more.

High-traffic-application

High-Traffic Applications

Unlimited Elasticity

Scale your applications with a distributed scale-out architecture and bottomless storage.

Best-in-Class Resiliency

High availability, disaster recovery, point-in-time recovery (PiTR), backup and restore, and multi-availability zone (AZ) failover.

Workload-consolidation

Workload Consolidation

Simplified Data Platform

Provides a single endpoint for transactional and analytical workloads while guaranteeing strong data consistency.

Extensible APIs

MySQL wire protocol compatibility plus connectors to Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes and more.

Real-time-analytics

Operational Cost Reduction

Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Enabled

Deploy database clusters anywhere in the world, in public, private, and hybrid cloud environments on VMs, containers, or bare metal.

Enterprise-Grade Security

Encrypt data both in-flight and at-rest.

MySQL vs. TiDB

TiDB’s distributed SQL design replaces MySQL’s manual scaling workarounds with built-in elasticity, strong consistency, and simplified operations.

Sharding

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Scaling

Scaling-MySQL

Consistency

Consistency-MySQLConsistency-TiDB

Sharding
Scaling
Consistency

Sharding-MySQLSharding-TiDB

Scaling-MySQL

Consistency-MySQLConsistency-TiDB

Adoption Made Simple

TiDB guides you through SQL modernization with a four-step process backed by tools, best practices, and expert support.

Assess

Step 1: Assess Workloads & Requirements

Work with TiDB experts to evaluate existing SQL workloads and identify bottlenecks. Our Workload Analysis feature surfaces performance patterns and recommends optimizations.

You’ll get

  • Guided assessment and tuning insights
  • Automated SQL optimization recommendations
  • Clear migration baselines for planning
Migrate

Step 2: Migrate with MySQL Compatibility Tools

Move from MySQL easily with hands-on migration assistance. TiDB’s MySQL protocol and Data Migration (DM) tool enable full or incremental data transfer—no code changes required.

You’ll get

  • Seamless migration from MySQL 5.7 / 8.0
  • Real-time replication and sharded-table merge
  • Schema updates with gh-ost
  • Live monitoring via TiUP
Scale

Step 3: Scale Elastically in Production

Scale horizontally with zero downtime. TiDB’s distributed architecture separates compute and storage for linear, fault-tolerant growth.

You’ll get

  • Auto-Scaling based on workload demand
  • Strong consistency via Raft protocol
  • Column-based HTAP storage for OLTP + analytics
  • Clusters up to 500+ nodes with RPO = 0
Ecosystem

Step 4: Optimize with Ecosystem Integrations

Keep performance stable with continuous optimization and expert guidance.

You’ll get

  • SQL Plan Management for consistent performance
  • Dashboard + Key Visualizer for trend insights
  • Automated query and index optimization
  • Seamless integration with billing and access systems

Hands-on Practice

hands-on-lab
Migrate from MySQL to TiDB Using TiDB Data Migration

Gain end-to-end experience configuring, migrating, and validating SQL workloads—exactly as outlined in Step 2.

Intermediate
90 minutes
Start Lab
hands-on-lab
SQL Workloads Replay with TiDB Data Migration

Validate post-migration performance by replaying real SQL traffic, ensuring workloads perform as expected before going live.

Advanced
90 minutes
Start Lab

Scale Out Beyond MySQL with TiDB

TiDB offers an ultra-reliable distributed SQL database that provides MySQL wire compatibility, horizontal scalability, and strong consistency. It decouples compute from storage, allowing each component to scale out independently.

With TiDB, data is automatically sharded into small chunks and distributed across storage nodes. This sharding is transparent to the user and can handle massive amounts of data—far beyond what a single node can manage.

Book a Demo

Up to
500TB

Scale Per Cluster

2 Million
QPS

At Millisecond Latencies

99.999%
Uptime

During Planned Outages

80% Less
Sprawl

Vs. Single-Node Deployments

Gartner Peer Insights

Customers Give TiDB 4.9 Stars

stars

Streak

“TiDB enables Streak users to share emails and metadata effortlessly, and enables our developers to move faster than ever before.”

Fred Wulff,
VP of Engineering

Bolt

“In the following years, we will rely on TiDB even more, including migrating more clusters from MySQL to TiDB and using TiCDC to set up multi-region clusters on AWS for failover.”

Boris Savelev,
SRE Manager

LINE

“Scale-in and scale-out in a cluster configuration is easy, and the ecosystem is very rich, with operational monitoring installed immediately with the installation command (TiUP).”

Kentaro Kitagawa,
Senior Database Administrator

See TiDB in Action

Get to know TiDB in the way that fits you best

View Interactive Demos

You’ll learn how to:

  • Scale out MySQL workloads with zero downtime
  • Combine transactional, operational, and AI data in one system
  • Gain real-time insights and built-in resilience

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