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Google Cloud SQL

Google Cloud SQL

Overview

What is Google Cloud SQL?

Google Cloud SQL is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) with the capability and functionality of MySQL.

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Recent Reviews

Great cloud db offering

9 out of 10
March 06, 2024
Incentivized
Google Cloud SQL (MySQL) is used as the relational data store for our product. The ability to scale up, have read replicas, and have …
Continue reading

SQL management for everyone

9 out of 10
July 05, 2021
We are using Google Cloud SQL as a managed service for R&D. We wanted to focus on the data without the need to manage the updates or …
Continue reading
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 6 features
  • Database security provisions (19)
    8.8
    88%
  • Database scalability (19)
    8.7
    87%
  • Automated backups (19)
    8.7
    87%
  • Monitoring and metrics (18)
    7.8
    78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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License - Express

$0

Cloud
per core hour

License - Web

$0.01134

Cloud
per core hour

Storage - for backups

$.08

Cloud
per month per GB

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://cloud.google.com/sql/pricing?ut…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Connecting Google Sheets to Cloud SQL using Apps Script

YouTube
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Features

Database-as-a-Service

Database as a Service (DBaaS) software, sometimes referred to as cloud database software, is the delivery of database services ocer the Internet as a service

8.8
Avg 8.7
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Product Details

What is Google Cloud SQL?

Google Cloud SQL is a fully-managed managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server with rich extension collections, configuration flags, and developer ecosystems.

Google Cloud SQL Features

Database-as-a-Service Features

  • Supported: Database scalability
  • Supported: Automated backups
  • Supported: Database security provisions
  • Supported: Monitoring and metrics

Google Cloud SQL Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Google Cloud SQL is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) with the capability and functionality of MySQL.

Azure SQL Database, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), and Microsoft SQL Server are common alternatives for Google Cloud SQL.

Reviewers rate Automatic software patching highest, with a score of 9.6.

The most common users of Google Cloud SQL are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(74)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-19 of 19)
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Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Cloud SQL was used to enable a number of our public cloud applications to centrally store and access data quickly, efficiently and in a secure way. It is often difficult to find a good SQL provider and this worked well for us, enabling easy migration and scaling of our applications.
  • Secure connections.
  • Easy to scale.
  • Easy to maintain.
  • A desktop management application could be useful.
  • A better split between the way service accounts are created by users and have it designated separately to the rest of workspace.
  • Improved alerting with third party monitoring.
GCSQL is great as a starter SQL provision for when building and developing. It has limitations when really trying to scale and with larger teams, but seems fine for individual developers or smaller apps & orgs that need something easy and quick, mostly following an enterprise style. Ideally, this works well with fully cloud applications.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Cloud SQL was mainly used to create interesting websites for many customers, who are middle-scale companies and individuals. We also used Cloud SQL products to create and manage virtual machines that can be used for training purposes for interns and newcomers so they can try out our developments.
  • Providing Free trial of 300 dollars.
  • Better monitoring capabilities and troubleshooting features.
  • Easier to set up an instance.
  • Lag of releasing the new open-source database systems for Google Cloud SQL.
  • Not much efficient and advanced billing cycle system.
  • Not having much rich database visualization / dashboards.
Although Google Cloud SQL has room for improvement by addressing a minor lack of features, its features and services keep it high among other SQL database products. It is very fast compared to others. Since it is cloud-based, maintenance is also easier. Integration capabilities are also more than expected.
Sahil Khan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Cloud SQL to manage relational databases in our organization on cloud. It helps us to setup and administer our relational databases with less human intervention. It automates all our backups, encryptions, increase storage capacity to provide our application reliability and scalability.
  • Automated Tasks
  • Manage and administer Relational Databases
  • Easy Migration
  • More Documentation
  • Product cost can reduced
  • Better Integration with other BI Tools
If you have a large relational database and you want to migrate it to cloud then Google Cloud SQL is best suited for it. It helps you to automate lot of tasks. You should use Google Cloud SQL if you want less time to manage database and spend more time using it.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use programming languages or common SQL clients to establish a connection with the instance. We use the given interfaces to administer the database and run SQL queries. It frees us from worrying as much about the supporting infrastructure and lets us concentrate more on developing apps. Additionally, it enables read replicas, which lets us transfer read queries to replicas for faster processing.
  • It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL
  • It has high availability
  • It has vertical and horizontal scaling
  • Increasing support for more database engines may enable a wider range of application needs to be met.
  • Implementing and updating cutting-edge security features on a constant basis.
  • Streamlining and enhancing the tools for transferring data to Google Cloud SQL from on-premises databases or other cloud providers.
A great option for web application backend powering is Google Cloud SQL. Google Cloud SQL can be used by online retailers and e-commerce platforms that need a dependable and scalable database backbone. Using Google Cloud SQL, our developers can quickly spin up database instances without requiring a lot of setup or maintenance. This fully-managed service is available for both development and testing environments.
Hemant Chaturvedi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Cloud SQL is a robust cloud-based SQL platform that we use at our organization to maintain our data. It is an exceptionally responsive, scalable, highly available, and reliable database platform. We use this platform for all the SQL requirements, including storing, querying, modifying, maintaining, and analyzing targeted data, which helps uncover helpful use cases and adds value to our organization. Since it is highly available, we hardly see any downtime, and even if there is any regional downtime, the service runs continuously from other geographies, thanks to the disaster recovery models at work in the backend. Our organization is a proud user of the GCP services and Google Cloud SQL platform.
  • Highly scalable without worrying about sudden transaction explosion during peak hours.
  • Highly available with multiple geographical locations and regions for nearly 0 downtime to the users.
  • Extremely reliable and responsive for high latency applications due to superb networking at the core.
  • Database snapshot cost-effectiveness can be improved to give it an edge over other cost-effective solutions for the same purpose.
An ideal choice for use cases mentioned below: Mission-critical applications with the criticality of nearly always on or always on. Robust and responsive database backend for elastic resources working behind. Low latency and high transaction-demanding applications.
Alok Pabalkar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Cloud SQL with Mysql Engine as the primary Database for storing Application Data. Our compute engine are connected to the SQL Cloud. We also use it to store the summarised data for MIS & Reporting.
  • Handle Transactions
  • MIS & Reporting
  • Maintain Structured Datasets
  • Better Control over ACL
  • Add replication factor to have a Readonly Reporting DB
Pros
- Great for storing Structured dataset
- Handling Transaction based workflows

Cons
- None I can think of
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Cloud SQL (MySQL) is used as the relational data store for our product. The ability to scale up, have read replicas, and have automatic failover built into the offering are really nice features. The automated backup feature is nice as well. To have 7 days of backups available at any time without having to support the processes necessary to make that happen is great.
  • Automatic failover to another region in case the database goes down.
  • Easily scale the instance up if more processing power or memory is required.
  • Automatic backup validation. The backups are performed on a daily basis within the selected window, however, they are not validated. This means the backup could be reported as successful but ultimately be unusable in a situation where it is needed. We got around this issue by periodically validating on our own by spinning up a box, restoring the backup to the new instance, and then destroying the instance after validation. It's not perfect, but is a good sanity check to make sure our backups are valid in case we do need them.
It is great if you don't want to worry about managing hardware and infrastructure and instead focus your efforts on work directly related to your product's database needs, i.e. schema design, efficient queries, etc. However, if you are dealing with very large data sets, then BigQuery, BigTable, or similar might be better suited for your needs.
Deepansh Daga | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Cloud SQL is being used by our organization at the enterprise level. It's being used in different projects. In some projects, we have migrated SQL DB to cloud SQL DB to save cost and leverage scalability. It's really easy to migrate data from on-premise to cloud SQL and use ETL also.
  • Scalability
  • Read only replicas
  • Easy migration
  • Partitioning
  • Golden gate type of replication
  • Recovery mechanism
Best suited for Financial services, banks, eCommerce, telecom companies products where more relational database kind of data is required and where we want to migrate from legacy system to cloud world.
But, I guess it would not be useful for IoT, analytics, real-time processing of data, etc. Where big data is more prominent.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using Google Cloud SQL as a managed service for R&D. We wanted to focus on the data without the need to manage the updates or security patches. We also wanted to have the ability to spin up SQL fast without going through the purchasing process--just click and it works.
  • Spins up fast
  • Easy to apply
  • No need to purchase licenses in advance
  • Unsupported external tools to monitor MSSQL
  • Latency from working outside Google Cloud environment
  • There some preferences you cannot edit/customize
  • Any company/team that needs/wants to grow fast will find that Google Cloud SQL will suit them well.
  • Pay-as-you-go option and saving you time for implementing infrastructure for SQL solution are big advantage.
  • The agility to spin up a database in any region and move it if needed.
Petrus A. Pavoni Gomes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as the main SQL database for our SaaS. The server is hosted on Cloud Run (serverless) and connect direcly using private IP inside the VPC.
It supports high availability and read replicas, as Pitr backup recovery and logs/metrics integrated to Google Cloud monitoring.
  • Pitr backups
  • High availability
  • Read replicas
  • Log and monitoring
  • SSL certificates are self signed, most services dont support them
  • Cant query high availability replicas [in my experience]
For a general purpose SQL database, it's very well suited, performant and secure, if you already use GCP.
If you intend to connect from other BI, analytics or 3rd party tools, I advise to check if they support SSL to Google Cloud SQL, because most don't. If you are on AWS, go with RDS
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I have worked with Google Cloud SQL for a R&D project. I was given the task to implement a data conversion application. we wanted to migrate from an on-prem SQL database to Google Cloud SQL. we decided to use Google SQL. It supports all the relational database needs. It is a fully managed and secure service.
  • It is fully managed
  • It is easy to setup
  • It provides high speed data transfer
  • [I feel] It needs more integrations
  • [I feel it] Needs to work on price structure
It is a very powerful database service. It can be easily set up even by an entry-level developer. It can be used by medium to large organizations in their various projects. It can be used by business apps as well at any level. It can also be used where latency is an issue as It is extremely fast
Niloofar Keshvari Nia | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Cloud SQL in all web projects to increase security and reliable backup. When any errors in the initial database are interrupted or occurred, the system switches to the replica db version according to the settings already defined for it, so that users can access the site and platform or application DB information. As a SAAS platform, it has excellent monitoring capabilities, multi-platform, high security, and agility in queries, and ultra-fast data analysis and the Google support team is very responsive.
  • High security and agility in query databases
  • Multi-platform and database recovery capability with just one click
  • Possibility of automatic switch to replica database in failover situations
  • Simple built in migration and connection tools
  • Many areas, including caching and indexing data, need to be developed
  • Create snapshot option of instance
  • The dashboard and monitoring section can have better customization capabilities
[Google Cloud SQL] is a big help for IT administrators to ensure the security of databases and data backups as well as replacing replica databases in failover situations, It is very powerful and fast in managing and migrating databases and it only takes a few minutes to create and connect to your first database using the built-in migration tools.
Ashok Kalra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Google Cloud SQL is used across technology, analytics and BI teams to store relational databases, tables, and run queries to fetch data from these databases.

Business problems addressed:
  • Joining data tables from different databases to give a combined view of attributes and records
  • Run SQL queries to fetch raw data and prepare product usage reports on top of it
  • Prepare an automated data API workflow to be sent directly to BI systems to generate automatic reports
  • Very easy to use and migrate existing database systems to Google Cloud SQL system
  • Easy to query with real-time query assessment as well as processing metrics to help optimize the queries
  • No need to learn any other querying language (like in Hadoop ecosystem), as SQL works pretty fine
  • Easy-to-use GCP portal to type in queries and see the results on the screen (no need to go on command line )
  • Easy to set up
  • Lack of latency with quota size increasing
  • Can't customize an instance’s IP
  • Bit more expensive than some other players in the market, for instance, while downloading information
  • Well suited for relational database storage and connections
  • Supports well-built APIs, which ensures easy access
  • Automatic failover (moving an application to a standby Google Cloud SQL server in case an instance fails)
  • Works really well with other Google Cloud products like Compute Engine, AppEngine, Kubernetes, etc.
  • Ensures security and compliance
Cameron Gable | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We migrated from using on-prem SQL databases to Google's managed MySQL database, CloudSQL, a few years back. It supports all of our relational database needs. Along with other Google-managed data structures, Cloud SQL plays an integral role for our software team and our R&D teams, as it is used as the primary storage for company-wide analysis.
  • It is fully managed, so it gives the user a hands-off approach to relational storage.
  • It has well-built APIs, so it is easy to access in a multitude of ways.
  • It is reasonably easy to use with the Google Cloud Console, so users can access it using a user interface.
  • There is some functionality you cannot do from the console, including, granting and restricting user privileges, among other database management capabilities.
  • It is not trivial to connect to spun up VMS. Currently, we use the Cloud SQL proxy to do so.
Overall, Cloud SQL serves all of the needs we need it to. It can do everything a relational database can do, plus it is completely managed so you don't have to worry about the size of the VM, partitioning, etc.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We came to Google Cloud SQL in need of a cloud database solution to house analytic data we collect from various I.T. systems, most importantly our trouble ticketing tool. The goal was a central repository that was easy to manage for our small organization. Our data storage needs are small compared to many organizations.
  • Easy Setup
  • Easy Configuration
  • Tools we use send people elsewhere (AWS especially)
  • Few integrations
Google Cloud SQL was very easy to setup because our institution is already already invested in the Google Cloud Platform. If we had gone with Amazon or Azure, there would have been extra complexity and cost of getting established. The product is a great fit for organizations already invested in GCP. Google offers everything the others do, however third party vendor support is seriously lacking (aka the vendors refer you to other tools like AWS etc).
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Cloud SQL for databases that are accessed across multiple servers. These dedicated SQL instances are easy to set up since they don't require a host VM. Not requiring a host VM also allows them to be more flexible and scalable. Settings allow Google Cloud SQL instances to automatically scale size as storage needs increase, and perform scheduled maintenance and backup. In our experience scaling and maintenance do not impact any system functionality.
  • Easy setup - No host VM, no software installation or configuration required.
  • Day to day reliability - Not depending on host VM allows more uptime.
  • Long term reliability - Storage scaling, backups, and maintenance can be scheduled to occur automatically.
  • Secure access is complicated to set up - This is the nature of secure access, but it can be frustrating spending much time simply configuring access.
  • No custom IP - It isn't possible to customize an instance's IP. This makes it harder to replace an instance since a new or clone instance always gets a new IP.
  • Cost tends to increase - This is the nature of cloud hosting, but over time costs creep up as utilization increases.
Google Cloud SQL is a great resource for some purposes, but it's probably overkill for others.
In cases where a database is not always needed (on sometimes, off others), it would be better to use a traditional software installation. If database needs are relatively small, software installation will perform just as well and be easier to support. If a database is only needed in one physical site or a small geographical region, it's better to use a regular server based installation. But as soon as a project has greater database needs, Google Cloud SQL is a great choice. Consider using it if any of these apply:

  • A large amount of data (10+ GB).
  • Decentralized access (many worksites, end-users, etc.).
  • Uptime and reliability are required.
Leonel Quinteros | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Google Cloud SQL with MySQL instances as our primary data storage for all our applications. Performance is great and configuring secure environments is straightforward. We reduced our DB maintenance tasks by 75% and our systems are running better than ever. Automatic backup policies and high availability replication are 1 click away.
  • Configuring a high availability cluster of MySQL or PostgreSQL databases is as easy as choosing how many instances do you want to have. Read-only replicas of the master DB can also be used for read operations relying on the "almost instant" replication mechanisms available.
  • Plays really well with other Google Cloud products, so interoperation with Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, Compute Engine, AppEngine, Kubernetes, VPC, etc. is straightforward and easy to secure, isolating the systems from outside.
  • Uptime SLA is high and maintenance operations are planned and notified in anticipation. Network and CPU performance is really good.
  • Automatic failover on high availability setups will automatically promote a read replica to master almost transparently for the client, so our applications will keep running even if the master DB server crashes.
  • There are no multi-master replication options. That may be a problem on distributed, high load, high performance environments.
  • Not many DB vendors available. MySQL came first, PostgreSQL took longer to be available and just now SQL Server is being offered as Beta.
  • Can get pricey quickly if you need to grow fast and much.
For any serious production setup, where "serious" means aware of the importance of having automatic/secure backups, a good recovery plan, high availability options and managed DB server maintenance, I go with this solution before any self-managed option.

I'd be cautious if I need too much processing power or storage available for my DB. On these cases, I'd first think again about my selected DB architecture, and then analyze some options to calculate ROI of each investment.
Kristian Hareland | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using it mainly whenever we need structured data.

Use case:
- Historical pricing of products (Archive)
  • Super easy to set up: new instance -> Authorization -> play
  • Automatic backup every night! (Keeps past 7 days as copy as well)
  • Automatic failover, in case your main SQL instance fails, they automatically switch you over.
  • It could be cheaper. Definitely cheaper.
  • It could provide more information about failovers.
  • It could allow you to customize more.
When you need relational storage.
Not when you need warehousing.
Tyler Longren | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[We're] using it as the primary database supporting multiple WordPress installations that are running on Google Cloud. It's being used for every site that we currently have on Google Cloud, and are in the process of moving more sites over to this platform. Having everything on Google's infrastructure makes everything easy to manage and Google Cloud SQL is insanely fast.
  • It's insanely fast.
  • Easy integration with Google Cloud hosted services.
  • It's backed by Google's infrastructure, which is always good.
  • Connecting to it for the first time is a little confusing.
  • An interface for interacting with the data would be awesome.
If you're hosting a site on Google Cloud, it only makes sense to make use of Google Cloud SQL for the database, as opposed to running a separate MySQL service on a VM. It's extremely fast and has resulted in a dramatic improvement in page load time across multiple sites.
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