Google Cloud SQL now Generally Available with an SLA, larger databases up to 500GB, and encryption

February 11, 2014


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Author PhotoBy Joe Faith, Product Manager

Cross-posted from the Google Cloud Platform Blog

Google Cloud SQL is a fully managed MySQL service hosted on Google Cloud Platform, providing a database backbone for applications running on Google App Engine or Google Compute Engine. Today, we are announcing Cloud SQL is generally available (GA), now with: encryption of customer data, a 99.95% uptime SLA, and support for databases up to 500GB in size.

Secure Encrypted Data
Cloud SQL data is now automatically encrypted. This adds to the existing security and reliability features, including:
  • Customer data, including in database tables and temporary files, is automatically stored encrypted (with encryption of backups coming soon).
  • All Cloud SQL traffic on Google’s internal networks is encrypted.
  • External connections can be encrypted using SSL.
  • All hosts and Google App Engine applications connecting to your instance must be explicitly authorized.
  • MySQL user grants can be used to control access at the database, table, or even column level.
  • Data is replicated multiple times in multiple locations.
  • Scheduled backups are automatically taken by default.

Larger databases
All Cloud SQL instances can now store up to 500GB, from our smallest D0 instance costing just $0.025 per hour up to D32 instances with 16GB of RAM. Your data is replicated multiple times in multiple zones and automatically backed up, all included in the price of the service. And you only pay for the storage that you actually use, so you don’t need to reserve this storage in advance.

SLA for availability
Replicated storage means we can guarantee 99.95% availability of the service. And because even a reduced service is not acceptable for many applications, we have set a high bar for availability: for example, we regard a single minute of just 20% connection failure as a downtime. See the SLA for more details.

Developer traction
Cloud SQL has seen some great developer traction, with a range of businesses relying on it for core applications:
  • Costco uses Google Compute Engine and Cloud SQL to run public e-commerce sites. As Don Burdick, Senior Vice President of Global Ecommerce at Costco, says, “Costco is the world's leading membership club warehouse with annual sales exceeding $100B. As part of our philosophy to keep costs down and pass savings on to our members, in June 2013 we implemented our ecommerce site for Mexico on Google Cloud Platform. The site has been operational since October 2013 and the Google Cloud Platform performance has exceeded our expectations. As a result of this project's success, we're currently migrating the website of one of our other countries to Google Cloud Platform.”
  • LiveHive is a social selling application used by 25,000+ sales professionals. Fritz Mueller, Vice President of Products says, "We found Google's Cloud SQL service to be an ideal combination of performance and convenience. Performance is key to us because we provide our customers with real-time data about their sales execution. With Google's Cloud SQL, we focus on building the functionality our customers want without worrying about reliability, scalability and upgrades."
  • Ocado manages logistics and e-commerce for some of the largest supermarkets in the UK. General Manager James Donkin says, “We're excited about the flexibility Cloud SQL brings to support quick development cycles that foster innovation, while scaling easily when required.”
  • Mark Kornfilt, co-founder of Live video streaming platform LiveStream, said “Thanks to Google App Engine and Cloud SQL, we were able to go from a new product concept to its launch in less than two months. This allows us to focus on building the product instead of worrying about operations, and provides all the tools needed to build a robust, reliable and scalable web app out of the box.”

Try it now
Learn more about Google Cloud SQL and try it now here.


Joe Faith is a Product Manager on the Google Cloud Team. In a previous life he was a researcher in machine learning, bioinformatics, and information visualization, and was founder of charity fundraising site Fundraising Skills.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor