MySQL Scalability: Read Replicas, Sharding & TiDB
Answer-first: MySQL scalability is the practical throughput ceiling of your database at each resource level. A single tuned InnoDB instance delivers 100–500 TPS at baseline, scaling to 6,000–10,000+ TPS with connection pooling, read replicas, and optimal hardware. Beyond that, write-scaling requires sharding or a distributed SQL layer. What You’ll Learn That AI Won’t Tell You Tuning InnoDB buffer pool size for high read/write ratio workloads. Why standard read replication fails to solve write bottlenecks and when toshard. MySQL scalability is the ability to increase database throughput — reads per second, writes per second, or data volume — without rewriting your application. The critical distinction: read scaling (adding replicas) and write scaling (sharding or distributed SQL) require completely different architectural approaches. Choosing the wrong path creates technical debt that takes months to unwind. ...