Google Cloud SQL is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) with the capability and functionality of MySQL.
$0
per core hour
Microsoft SQL Server
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database.
$1,418
Per License
Pricing
Google Cloud SQL
Microsoft SQL Server
Editions & Modules
License - Express
$0
per core hour
License - Web
$0.01134
per core hour
Storage - for backups
$.08
per month per GB
HA Storage - for backups
$.08
per month per GB
Storage - HDD storage capacity
$.09
per month per GB
License - Standard
$0.13
per core hour
Storage - SSD storage capacity
$.17
per month per GB
HA Storage - HDD storage capacity
$.18
per month per GB
HA Storage - SSD storage capacity
$.34
per month per GB
License - Enterprise
$0.47
per core hour
Memory
$5.11
per month per GB
HA Memory
$10.22
per month per GB
vCPUs
$30.15
per month per vCPU
HA vCPUs
$60.30
per month per vCPU
Subscription
$1,418.00
Per License
Enterprise
$13,748.00
Per License
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Cloud SQL
Microsoft SQL Server
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Pricing varies with editions, engine, and settings, including how much storage, memory, and CPU you provision. Cloud SQL offers per-second billing.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Cloud SQL
Microsoft SQL Server
Considered Both Products
Google Cloud SQL
Verified User
Manager
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Google SQL was great as a first SQL provision. It quickly enabled the apps to be built and scaled as needed for a while. It was robust and adaptable as needed and easy to export as needed when ready, depending on growth. Cost-wise, it's a good choice and requires little …
Does what it promises well, for instance, as a sidecar for the main enterprise data warehouse. However, I would not recommend using it as the main data warehouse, particularly due to the heavy business logic, as other dedicated tools are more suitable for ensuring scalable operations in terms of change management and multi-developer adjustments.
Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.
Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.
We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
As with other cloud tools, users must learn a new terminology to navigate the various tools and configurations, and understand Google Cloud's configuration structure to perform even the most basic operations. So the learning curve is quite steep, but after a few months, it gets easier to maintain.
SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
GCP support in general requires a support agreement. For small organizations like us, this is not affordable or reasonable. It would help if Google had a support mechanism for smaller organizations. It was a steep learning curve for us because this was our first entry into the cloud database world. Better documentation also would have helped.
We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
Unlike other products, Google Cloud SQL has very flexible features that allow it to be selected for a free trial account so that the product can be analyzed and tested before purchasing it. Integration capabilities with most of the web services tools are easier regarding Google Cloud SQL with its nature and support.
[Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
Improved integration with Google Cloud, we have set up some automations with Google Workspace, and we have noticed that the raw data sharing between them is very fast as compared to using some other managed database, not sure why.
Due to some downtime during maintenance, we had to set up a relatively small service which ingested the data while this went down and dumped it when it came back up. So this was a negative impact on our ROI, since now we had to remedy this downtime against the same profit margins
It was cheaper than the legacy aws service since we needed large database instances
Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.