XD.com runs all its game business systems on PolarDB for MySQL — a cloud-native database with storage and computing separation — to support over one million concurrent players, 24/7 high availability, and fast recovery from server failures and upgrades.
About XD.com
XD.com is one of China's top 100 internet companies, operating across game research and development, animation production, and idol entertainment. Founded in 2002 as VeryCD — one of China's earliest internet sharing platforms — the company rebranded as XD.com in 2009 and pivoted to web and mobile gaming. Today, XD.com distributes its TAPTAP game community globally, serving players across the Chinese mainland, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Challenges
Scaling a global game platform introduced three interconnected database challenges:
| Challenge | Details |
|---|---|
| Global deployment with low latency | Distributing TAPTAP globally required consistent, low-latency database performance across regions — especially in the densely populated markets of Southeast Asia. |
| 1,000,000+ peak concurrent users | At peak, XD.com's platform handles over one million players online simultaneously across multiple countries and regions. The database layer must sustain this concurrency without degradation. |
| Fast recovery from server restarts | Game operations involve frequent version upgrades and regional server maintenance. Hardware or software failures also trigger server restarts. In all these cases, the database must reload game state quickly to keep downtime imperceptible to players. |
Solution
XD.com uses PolarDB for MySQL as the foundation for all its game business systems. The storage and computing separation architecture addresses each challenge directly:
High concurrency at scale: PolarDB for MySQL handles large data volumes with built-in high concurrency support, high availability, and elastic scaling — letting XD.com serve players globally without provisioning excess capacity in advance.
Fast post-restart data loading: PolarDB for MySQL's high-performance read capability allows game servers to reload state rapidly after a restart, whether triggered by a planned upgrade or an unexpected hardware or software failure.
Results
Good gaming experience
The storage and computing separation architecture provides each cluster with a primary node and one read-only node, delivering 3x the read and write performance of standard MySQL. This directly benefits two high-frequency game operations:
Server restarts and version upgrades: High-performance reads reduce the time game servers need to reload state, shortening maintenance windows and keeping players in the game.
Elastic scaling for new game launches: Compute resources can be added or removed with strong elastic scalability, so XD.com can open new regional servers and scale capacity without manual database intervention.
24/7 high availability
Data is stored in three copies across the cluster, ensuring consistency and reliability. When the primary node fails, PolarDB for MySQL completes failover within 30–60 seconds, ensuring that online services can quickly recover while data integrity is ensured.
Full MySQL ecosystem compatibility
PolarDB for MySQL is 100% compatible with MySQL 5.6, 5.7, and 8.0, including the broader MySQL ecosystem and open source middleware tools. XD.com's teams can use existing database tooling for game history, in-game purchases, and operational events without migration overhead.
Customer quote
"PolarDB for MySQL provides high performance read and write capabilities, and is 100% compatible with MySQL, which enables seamless business migration, supports 1 million players online at the same time, and rapid business recovery from server's restart due to software or hardware failures."