How ICBC Transformed Its Legacy Systems with a MySQL Distributed Architecture

Database Transformation Background

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) faced severe limitations with its traditional mainframe + DB2 architecture, including limited horizontal scalability, inability to guarantee 24/7 service, long development cycles, and high licensing costs.

Core Challenges and Requirements

Processing Capacity: The massive transaction volume required horizontal scaling beyond the vertical limits of the legacy system.

Operational Risk: New online services demanded continuous availability (7×24 h) and disaster‑recovery capabilities that the old design could not provide.

Rapid Delivery: Tight coupling between applications slowed development and product release.

Cost Control: Mainframe hardware and commercial database licenses incurred tens of millions of yuan annually.

Strategic Goals and Migration Path

ICBC aimed to build a flexible, open, efficient, collaborative, and secure IT architecture by moving to a distributed MySQL‑based solution. The migration was organized into three stages:

1. Prototype Development and Exploration (2015‑2017)

During this phase, personal‑account services were shifted from the mainframe to an open platform, proving technical feasibility and defining a MySQL‑centric roadmap.

2. Foundation Research and Pilot (2017)

Open‑source MySQL was evaluated, a prototype was launched in production, and initial capabilities such as distributed services, transactions, batch processing, caching, messaging, and configuration management were built.

3. Large‑Scale Implementation and Promotion (2018‑present)

Enterprise‑grade MySQL services were rolled out, introducing distributed middleware, high‑availability designs, automated operations, resource‑use optimization, cloud‑native deployment, and containerization.

Key Technical Strategies

Shift from centralized to distributed architecture.

Replace proprietary solutions with open‑source (IOE‑free) components.

Limit commercial products and embrace open‑source ecosystems.

Distributed Technology Stack

The stack includes distributed services, transaction frameworks, batch frameworks, caching, data reconciliation, messaging, configuration centers, and unified operation‑management platforms.

High‑Availability Design

ICBC adopted semi‑synchronous MySQL replication, multi‑site (two‑city‑three‑center) disaster recovery, and automatic failover achieving RPO = 0 and RTO < 60 seconds.

Containerization of MySQL

To overcome data‑center capacity limits, MySQL was packaged as containers, improving resource utilization by 4‑5× and enabling rapid provisioning through a unified operation platform.

Results and Impact

More than 120 applications, 2 000 servers, and 2 500 MySQL instances were deployed, handling daily transaction volumes of up to 7 billion with peak TPS exceeding 30 000. Costs dropped significantly as mainframe spending decreased while transaction volume grew ~20 % annually. The architecture now supports multi‑active, cross‑city high availability and provides a foundation for future cloud services and data‑exchange platforms.

Future Directions

ICBC plans to deepen cloud‑native services, build real‑time data‑exchange platforms, continue Oracle migration, and explore emerging distributed database technologies to maintain self‑sufficiency and resilience.