Date: September 24, 2026
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 AM PT
Migrating off MySQL solves the scaling ceiling. But it does not automatically shrink the fleet. Most teams arrive on TiDB still running the cluster topology their old architecture forced on them: one database per service, replicas for read scale, and separate systems for reporting. In this hands-on lab, we consolidate that sprawl. You’ll see how Resource Groups isolate workloads on shared infrastructure so a batch job cannot starve production traffic. We’ll also explore how teams like Plaid collapsed 234 Amazon Aurora MySQL databases into an estate a six-person team runs with 96% less maintenance work.
What you’ll learn:
- How to map an existing cluster inventory to a consolidated TiDB topology, and where consolidation is the wrong call.
- Configuring Resource Groups for workload isolation, priority, and runaway query control under real contention.
- Serving operational analytics from the columnar engine instead of a separate reporting replica.
- Running upgrades, backups, and point-in-time recovery across a consolidated estate without per-cluster toil.
- Building the cost model: what actually comes off the bill, and what gets added back.
Speaker:
Ben Sherrill is a Senior Sales Engineer at TiDB
Ben Sherrill is a Senior Sales Engineer at TiDB, where he focuses on competitive differentiation, query optimization, performance testing, and integrations across the broader ecosystem. Backed by a strong foundation in cloud infrastructure and networking, Ben brings deep technical expertise in distributed SQL and NewSQL, system design, and cloud architecture. He frequently works across Kubernetes environments, data streaming platforms, infrastructure as code (IaC), and observability stacks to help customers unlock the full potential of TiDB.