TiDB practice · certified bench

TiDB certified experts, in quorum.

PingCAP-certified DBAs who run distributed SQL for a living: Raft groups, region hotspots, and TiFlash replicas. Every TiDB engagement is staffed with a named certified lead and backup—not MySQL DBAs improvising on a distributed engine.

Talk to a TiDB expert

REVIEWED ON

Clutch

★★★★★

4.9 · Verified reviews

TiDB USER DAY INDIA 2025

Main-stage keynote, TiDB User Day India 2025

Kabilesh P.R., Founding Partner & Principal Solutions Architect, Mydbops.

PingCAP leader handing the TiDB award trophy to Kabilesh P.R.

RECOGNITION

Receiving the TiDB award from PingCAP leadership

Handed over on stage at TiDB User Day India 2025.

AWS SUMMIT BENGALURU

The Mydbops bench at the TiDB booth

The same certified engineers who run client clusters, on the floor with the TiDB ecosystem team.

CERTIFIED & COMPLIANT ISO 27001 ISO 9001 PCI-DSS AWS Advanced Tier Partner PingCAP Certified DBAs on-call 24×7 first response < 15 min

ISO 27001 certifiedISO 9001 certifiedPCI-DSS certified AWS advanced tier services partnerPingCAP certified bench 10 B+ transactions handled per day6000+ servers under management 120+ cloud migrations delivered ISO 27001 certifiedISO 9001 certifiedPCI-DSS certified AWS advanced tier services partnerPingCAP certified bench 10 B+ transactions handled per day6000+ servers under management 120+ cloud migrations delivered

Community & Events

Mydbops on stage: leading the TiDB community.

High-resolution highlights from our keynote presentations at TiDB User Days, joint engineering meetups with PingCAP & AWS, and technical exhibition booths.

Presenting Ease of Operation & Development at TiDB User Day India 2025

TECHNICAL KEYNOTE

Ease of Operation & Development, live on the main screen

Walking a full auditorium through online DDL, auto-rebalancing, TTL data expiry and zero-downtime upgrades.

Fielding architecture questions at the TiDB booth

TiDB ECOSYSTEM BOOTH

Fielding architecture questions at the booth

Sharding, HTAP and migration paths, answered face to face with cloud architects.

MIGRATION BENCHMARK

7 TB migrated in under 28 hours

TiDB Lightning physical loading, storage down 79% to 1.5 TB, primary-key changes folded into the restore.

Eight capabilities of Ease of Operation and Development

FROM THE KEYNOTE DECK

The eight capabilities, one slide

Cluster management with TiUP, online DDL, data expiry, auto-rebalancing, zero-downtime upgrade, MySQL syntax support, distributed backups, auto failover.

COMMUNITY MEETUP

Speaking at a Mydbops database meetup

Open-source database practice shared with the local engineering community, not only from vendor stages.

RDS Challenges keynote slide describing Yulu 18TB data challenges

CUSTOMER STORY, ON STAGE

Opening the Yulu story: the RDS challenges

Log data past 18 TB, bottlenecked writes, DDL crawling and a cost curve going the wrong way.

The Problem

"Running distributed SQL" is not the same as "having a certified DBA on your cluster."

Cloud providers host the infrastructure, but they do not fix region hotspots, unbalanced Raft consensus, or unoptimized primary keys that tank your p99 query latency.

HOTSPOT RISK

Region Hotspots & Key Collisions

Monotonically increasing auto-increment keys concentrate all write traffic onto a single TiKV region node, causing severe p99 latency spikes.

SCHEDULING GAP

Unbalanced Raft Leader Distribution

Default Placement Driver (PD) scheduling can stack Raft leadership on isolated nodes, exhausting CPU and disk I/O while other nodes sit idle.

RESOURCE WASTE

Blind TiFlash Columnar Replication

Replicating every table to TiFlash without query-pattern analysis wastes cloud memory, strains replication, and degrades transactional path performance.

DATA INTEGRITY

Unvalidated Schema Risks

Executing online DDL schema changes without checking Placement Driver region splits leads to lock contention and production query degradation.

The Mydbops Guarantee: Most TiDB incidents stem from configuration gaps and improper key design, not engine bugs. Mydbops PCTP-certified DBAs fix these root causes proactively.

Technical Depth

Real TiDB depth: the specifics, not a checklist.

Our PCTP-certified DBAs audit, migrate, and run high-throughput TiDB clusters every single day across three core operational pillars.

Schema & Key Range Engineering

Eliminating write bottlenecks by designing auto-random primary keys, clustered indexes, and optimal shard bit distributions.

Auto-random key re-indexing
Pessimistic vs. optimistic locking strategy
Clustered index evaluation

Zero-Downtime Migration Pipeline

Utilizing physical bulk ingestion and live CDC streaming to migrate multi-terabyte datasets without blocking transactions.

Dumpling parallel data exports
TiDB Lightning physical mode ingest
Live CDC replication via TiDB DM

Continuous HTAP & PD Tuning

Optimizing Placement Driver scheduling and steering analytical workloads to TiFlash columnar replicas seamlessly.

Per-table TiFlash replica counts
Optimizer hint steering for HTAP
PD region re-balancing rules

How We Are Different

Open-source tools vs. Mydbops TiDB Practice

Compare how different operational models approach distributed database operations, data reconciliation, and production support.

Capability / Feature	DIY / Basic Monitoring	Mydbops TiDB Practice Recommended
Joint Architecture Sign-off	✕ None	✓ Official PingCAP Partner Review
Row-by-Row Parity Verification	✕ Manual Sample Checks	✓ 100% Sync-Diff-Inspector Verification
Key Range & Hotspot Tuning	✕ Unhandled Hotspots	✓ Custom Auto-Random Key Redesign
Post-Migration DBA Support	✕ In-house On-call	✓ 24×7 Named PCTP Lead & Backup DBA
Guaranteed SLA Response	✕ Best Effort	✓ Contractual < 15 Minute First Response

PCTP CERTIFIED DBA

Bench Leadership

Kabilesh P.R.

Co-Founder & Principal Solutions Architect, Mydbops

🏆 First TiDB Certified Professional (PCTP) in India outside PingCAP

Leading Mydbops' distributed SQL practice, Kabilesh brings over a decade of database engineering leadership across TiDB, MySQL, and cloud-native architectures. As a pioneer in the TiDB ecosystem, he has architected high-throughput, multi-terabyte cluster migrations and trained our bench of certified DBAs.

Connect on LinkedIn AWS Community Builder · ScyllaDB Certified

Click to enlarge

TiDB Champion & Thought Leadership · TiDB User Day India 2025

The credential path

PingCAP certification framework for DBAs

Every DBA managing client clusters clears rigorous PingCAP credentials. Here is what each level certifies for operational database administration.

01

PRACTITIONER

Certified TiDB Practitioner

Entry level qualification. Demonstrates a working grasp of TiDB's core concepts, architecture, distributed consensus, terminology and HTAP use cases.

architecture basics
terminology
use cases
HTAP concepts

02

PCTA

PingCAP Certified TiDB Associate

Associate level for database administrators. Certifies the ability to deploy, manage and operate real workloads on self-hosted TiDB and TiDB Cloud: installation, topology, scaling and cluster maintenance.

TiUP deployment
topology design
scale in / out
cluster maintenance
TiDB Cloud

03

PCTP

PingCAP Certified TiDB Professional DBA

The professional tier for production administration. Certifies complete mastery of TiDB cluster principles, large-scale operation, tooling (TiDB Lightning, DM, TiCDC, sync-diff-inspector) and emergency hotspot triage.

TiDB Lightning
DM
TiCDC
sync-diff-inspector
hotspot triage
DR auto-sync

Client Trust

What database leaders say about Mydbops

“The major benefit came from adopting TiDB with Mydbops' guidance, which has shown noticeable performance improvements and query latency cuts.”

Naveen Malhotra

DBA & Architect, Credgenics

“It's really impressive to see how Mydbops helped reduce our 18TB dataset down to just 3.4TB without downtime during our TiDB migration.”

Naveen Dachuri

Co-Founder & CTO, Yulu

“Mydbops provides 24×7 proactive database management that lets us scale our real-time messaging platform with absolute reliability.”

Ravi Ranjan

VP - Engineering, CometChat

Case Studies & Migration Benchmarks

Documented migration & optimization results

Fintech · real-time

4× faster

Average query latency cut from 200 ms to 50 ms on a TiDB v7.5.0 cluster.

CPU efficiencyFreed processing headroom by cutting TiKV CPU consumption.
System stabilityDisruptive I/O spikes eliminated.
Cost efficiencyProvisioned IOPS lowered from 12,000 to 8,000.

Read the Credgenics case study

Logistics · migration

72% less storage

An 18 TB dataset optimised down to 3.4 TB on a TiDB cluster running on AWS.

UptimeUninterrupted service through TiDB's built-in failover.
Online DDLSchema changes applied without affecting application performance.
Live syncReplication kept in step for a smooth switchover.

Read the Yulu case study

Transactions / day

10^B+

Across managed fleets.

Servers managed

6000⁺

Under active monitoring.

First response

<15^min

Contractual SLA, 24×7.

Cloud migrations

120⁺

Delivered end to end.

Where certification earns its keep

One cluster,
two engines(HTAP).

TiDB's HTAP split is the part teams most often get wrong. The row store and the columnar store live inside the same cluster, so an unplanned analytical query can quietly land on your transactional path. Deciding what replicates to TiFlash, and what never should, is an operational DBA judgement call.

Region balanceSplitting hot regions and reshaping keys so writes spread instead of stacking on one node.
TiFlash replica policyPer-table replica counts sized to the real query mix, not switched on wholesale.
Optimizer steeringMaking sure analytical plans actually reach the columnar engine.
Placement rulesPinning replicas across zones for DR auto-sync without paying twice in latency.

Technical Guides & Webinars

The same engineers
write the documentation.

Certification proves what someone was tested on. Published work proves what they actually do all day. Every guide and talk below was delivered by the Mydbops DBA team.

Technical Webinar · 38th MyWebinar

Migration Journey To TiDB

Empowering scalability, performance, and simplicity: real-world migration strategies delivered by Kabilesh P.R.

Watch webinar

Meetup Session · PgVizag Meetup 6

Open Source & Distributed SQL Practitioner Insights

13+ years database experience and lessons learned as India's first non-PingCAP PCTP Certified Professional.

Read session recap

Architecture Deep Dive

TiDB Cluster & Storage Architecture Explained

Understanding TSO timestamp allocation, PD cluster metadata, and MySQL protocol execution layers.

Read guide

Operational Deep Dive

Ease of Operation & Development in TiDB

Centralized TiUP cluster management, non-blocking online DDL, auto-rebalancing, and distributed backups.

Read guide

All TiDB technical articles

How to bring us in

Three ways to use the bench.

TiDB consulting

A fixed-scope engagement: architecture review, topology and capacity plan, hotspot analysis, and a written set of recommendations your own team can execute.

Consulting service

Remote TiDB DBA

Certified DBAs on your rota, 24×7, with a named lead and named backup. Monitoring, patching, backups, upgrades and escalation under a 15-minute first-response SLA.

Remote DBA

Migration & audit

MySQL or Aurora to TiDB, run with DM and Lightning, reconciled with sync-diff-inspector, and signed off with a performance and security audit before cutover.

Performance & security audit

Before you ask

Questions we get on the first call.

Yes. Each certified engineer holds a PingCAP digital credential with its own verification link, and PingCAP welcomes certified engineers into its global community group. We share the credentials for your named lead and backup at kickoff, before any access is granted.

That is the point of naming both a lead and a backup. Both are credentialed, both hold your runbook context, and escalations do not route into an uncertified pool. If the assigned engineer changes, you are told who and why.

Partly: and the gap is exactly why certification matters. TiDB speaks the MySQL protocol, so the surface feels familiar, but region splitting, Raft leadership, distributed transactions and TiFlash replication have no MySQL equivalent. Treating TiDB as a drop-in MySQL is the most common cause of the hotspots we get called in to fix.

Both. The PCTA and PCTP credentials cover self-managed clusters and TiDB Cloud, and the bench runs a mix today: including hybrid setups where analytics sits in the cloud while the transactional cluster stays on your own infrastructure.

Typically a two-week onboarding: access and inventory in week one, observability and runbooks in week two, then the 24×7 rota begins. Emergency takeovers move faster: tell us what is on fire and we will scope from there.

Yes, and it is where most engagements start. We have moved production workloads onto TiDB using TiDB DM and Lightning, with sync-diff-inspector reconciliation before cutover, including an 18 TB dataset reduced to 3.4 TB for Yulu, and a v7.5.0 upgrade for Credgenics that cut query latency fourfold.

Next step

Put a certified name
on your cluster.

Bring us your topology, your p99 and your worst Grafana panel. A PCTP-certified DBA will walk through it with you, with no scripted discovery call.

Talk to a TiDB expert Read case studies