Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner

In this post, I have compared two major cloud computing service offerings Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner, their differences, and much more. [To register for a Free Master Class of Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect Certification, find the link at the bottom]

Let’s have a look at the topics of discussion:

• What is Google Cloud SQL?
• Features of Google Cloud SQL
• Use Cases of Google Cloud SQL
• Drawbacks of Google Cloud SQL
• What is Cloud Spanner?
• How does Spanner Work?
• Features of Cloud Spanner
• Use Cases of Cloud Spanner
• Drawbacks of Cloud Spanner
• Difference between Cloud SQL vs Cloud Spanner
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What is Google Cloud SQL?

Google Cloud SQL is a fully managed service offered by Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud SQL is a MySQL database inside Google Cloud. There is no need to install, maintain and create admin accounts because it is fully managed by Google Cloud. It helps you create, modify, configure and utilize a relational database, same as MySQL.

Google sends constant updates and adds new features to its services to fulfill the business requirements of its users.

Let’s have a look at the improvements done in Google Cloud SQL.

• Google deliberately increased the storage space to 100 Gigabytes which was 10 Gigabytes earlier.
• The modified version is loaded with the capacity of 16GB RAM to run instances hassle-free.
• Increased RAM has helped users to keep four times more cache than earlier.
• Now Google provides both replicated and non-replicated databases.

Features of Google Cloud SQL

You can easily migrate your data from MySQL database to Google Cloud SQL. Let’s see some of the features of Google Cloud SQL.

• Cloud SQL is a fully managed service from Google Cloud, so users can directly use this service rather than maintaining them.
• Google Cloud SQL is easy to use. It comes up with a graphical user interface that helps build database instances with just a few mouse clicks without typing those lengthy commands.
• Google promises 100% availability of your data across all the regions no matter what happens to the data center.
• Storing and managing data in Google Cloud SQL is highly secured. It provides top-notch security to the data by creating automated backups. So your data is secured in case any breach or huge failure happens.
• Google Cloud storage is speedy due to added storage space and RAM.
• It replicates your data in multiple zones and provides automatic failover.
• It allows to import and export databases and CSV files using MySQL dump.
• You can easily clone in an instance.
• It also provides automated and on-demand backups and speedy recovery.

Check out: Google Cloud Services & Tools

Use Cases of Google Cloud SQL

Let’s have a look at the couple of use cases of Google Cloud SQL.

• Google Cloud SQL is a cloud-based alternative to on-premises, local databases such as SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Companies and other users use Cloud SQL because there is no need to manage it. So users can focus more on using it rather than managing databases.
• Applications such as Compute Engine, App Engine, and many other services use Cloud SQL for their data management.

Drawbacks of Google Cloud SQL

As we discussed the features and use cases of Cloud SQL, it has some limitations as well. Now let’s quickly go through the limitations of Google Cloud SQL.

• It does not support user-defined functions.
• It does not support the following MySQL statements:
  • CREATE FUNCTION
  • INSTALL/UNINSTALL PLUGIN
  • LOAD_FILE()
  • SHA2()
  • SELECT—INTO OUTFILE
• It also falls short of supporting super privilege.

Check out: Google Cloud SQL

What is Cloud Spanner?

Any application you see today has a database. Larger and globally used applications require a solid database to manage all the operations. This gives rise to the Cloud Spanner.

Cloud Spanner is a fully managed database service offered by Google Cloud.  It is a globally distributed, strongly consistent, and the only enterprise-grade service that combines SQL queries, transactions, and realtional structure. It provides excellent data consistency, scalability and eliminates management overhead. Cloud Spanner is specially designed for handling a massive amount of data in banks, gaming industries, retailing, etc.

How does Spanner Work?

The above image illustrates a four-node regional Cloud Spanner instance that is hosting two databases. A node is nothing but a measure of compute present in Spanner. Node servers are meant to serve the read and write per commit transaction requests. But, node servers do not store the data. In a single region, each node gets replicated in three zones.

Nodes present in the zone are responsible for reading and writing the storage of the respective zone. It stores the data in Google’s underlying Colossus distributed replicated file system. Now, this thing provides huge benefits while redistributing load because the data is not linked to individual nodes. If there is a failure in the node or a zone fails, you will not face any downtime. Your entire database remains available and is being served by the remaining nodes. There is no need to intervene for the availability of data.

Check out: Google Cloud Professional Architect: Hands-On Guide

Features of Cloud Spanner

Let’s have a look at the key features of Cloud Scanner.

• It is a relational database specially designed for auto scalability.
• Google Cloud Platform claims that Cloud SQL is 99.999% available. You will never experience any downtime because of its transparent, synchronous replication across regions.
• It optimizes the performance by automatically sharding the data based on request load and the volume of the data.
• It provides strong transactional consistency.
• It is built on Google Cloud’s dedicated network that ensures low latency, security, and reliability.
• It can make schema changes online, such as adding a row or column while serving traffic with zero downtime.
• Its backup and restores feature recover the database to the previous version when it was backup up.
• It supports multiple languages such as  C#, C++, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.

Use Cases of Cloud Spanner

There are many use cases of Cloud Spanner in enterprises to lower down their operational burden.

• Banks, Fintech Companies, and regulators demand 24*7 access to the correct information so that they can perform core operations hassle-free. Spanner is used in payment gateways and online banking.
• Cloud Spanner is also used in the gaming industry. It supports real-time gameplay and in-gaming purchasing. A million users demand real-time gameplay on the internet. This high burst of traffic requires a platform that can handle heavy loads and requests. Hence Spanner is useful.
• Spanner helps retail as well. Online shopping, in-store pickup, digital wallet, rewards, and many other things are there that need a solid platform for computation. There Spanner turns out to be the best fit for these cases.

Drawbacks of Cloud Spanner

Cloud Spanner is quite an expensive service that runs on hardware with custom clocks that are meant for OLTP data.

• Its write API is not strictly SQL but read API is SQL.
• You can expect a little higher latency because it needs to sync data in real-time.
• The hybrid Deployment feature is missing here.
• You will not get NoSQL. NoSQL constructs like expiring older data with TTL are missing here.

Difference between Cloud SQL vs Cloud Spanner

Let’s discuss Cloud SQL vs. Cloud Spanner to get a clearer picture.

Let’s have a look at the most frequently asked questions regarding Cloud SQL and Cloud Spanner.

FAQs

Q1. What is the difference between Cloud SQL and Cloud Spanner?

Ans: The main difference is that spanner is not made for generic SQL needs; it is for massive scale opportunities such as 1000s of writes per second globally. At the same time, Cloud SQL is a generic database used for normal storage and query purposes that do not require any software installation and maintenance.

Q2. Does Google use Cloud Spanner?

Ans: Cloud spanner is specially designed on Google’s dedicated network to provide low latency, reliability, and security for its users globally.

Q3. Is Cloud SQL Multi-region?

Ans: Yes, Cloud SQL does cross-region replication that reduces operational overhead. It is fully integrated with Google Cloud’s privacy features and SQL security. It is easy to set up, maintain, and manage.

Q4. Are cloud spanners expensive?

Ans: Yes, cloud spanner is quite an expensive product from Google Cloud. Its price range is from  $2.70 to $28 per hour for a minimum three-node, production-ready instance, excluding the storage cost.

Q5. Who uses Google Cloud spanner?

Ans: As the Google Cloud Spanner is the most expensive cloud product, so it is used by companies having more than 10000 employees and revenue of more than 1000M dollars.

Conclusion

Cloud Spanner vs Cloud SQL battle continues to escalate as the demand for cloud databases is at its peak. Many large and small growing enterprises are using Cloud SQL and Cloud Spanner. Anytime you opt for one of these services, make sure to do thorough research and then choose one. As discussed above, Cloud Spanner is suitable for larger databases, whereas cloud SQL is a great service for small-scale database requirements.

Related References

• GCP Professional Cloud Architect: Everything You Need To Know
• Google Professional Cloud Architect: Step-By-Step Hands-On Guide
• Google Cloud Free Account: Steps to Register for Free Trial Account
• Google Cloud Services & Tools
• Google Cloud Platform Console Walkthrough
• Beginners Guide To Google Cloud Compute Services
• Deploying An Application To A GKE Cluster
• Check out the official Docs for Cloud Spanner
• Check out the official Docs for Cloud SQL
• Google Cloud SQL: Fully Managed Database Service

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