Managed MySQL/PostgreSQL DB infrastructure and clusters
November 20, 2019

Managed MySQL/PostgreSQL DB infrastructure and clusters

Leonel Quinteros | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Google Cloud SQL

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.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.
  • When first migrated to a cloud environment, the Cloud SQL instance had a higher cost than our former MySQL VM instance, but many other infrastructure costs had also been reduced and the total balance of our migration to the cloud was a reduction of 45% of our infrastructure costs.
  • DB performance has increased and maintenance tasks reduced in a high percentage.
  • Disaster recovery plans are easier to follow now than before our cloud migration.
Google Cloud SQL is very similar to other cloud provider options. AWS and DigitalOcean are direct competitors, While Azure is focusing on their own products. At cloud provider level, it's a matter of choosing the provider, and this product will not play a significant role on that decision.

Now, between this and managing my own DB instances, only reasons to do that are if I need a DB vendor not available, if doing that will reduce operational costs significantly, or if I need to have full control over my data for regulatory or confidentiality reasons.
I haven't used support for this product since I deployed my first instance. After running it for some years, the docs have always been enough to solve any problem I had encountered.
But speaking about the vendor, Google Cloud support answered well and in an acceptable time to the few issues we needed to get assistance for.

Do you think Google Cloud SQL delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Google Cloud SQL's feature set?

Yes

Did Google Cloud SQL live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Google Cloud SQL go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Google Cloud SQL again?

Yes

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.

Google Cloud SQL Feature Ratings

Automatic software patching
10
Database scalability
8
Automated backups
8
Database security provisions
10
Monitoring and metrics
9
Automatic host deployment
9

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