Tag: Cloud SQL

Google Cloud Platform Services: A 2025 Guide to Pricing, Core Tools, and Getting Started

Google Cloud Platform Services: The Complete Guide

When people talk about cloud computing, one of the names that always comes up is Google Cloud Platform services (GCP). It’s Google’s answer to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and it brings Google’s scale, security, and innovation to businesses of every size. Whether you’re a startup building your first app, or a global enterprise running massive data pipelines, GCP has a set of services designed to help you move faster, stay secure, and reduce costs.

What is Google Cloud Platform (GCP)?

Google Cloud Platform is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google. It provides infrastructure, storage, networking, databases, artificial intelligence, analytics, and developer tools—all available on demand. The beauty of GCP is that you don’t need to maintain servers or buy expensive hardware. Instead, you can rent what you need, scale up or down instantly, and pay only for what you use.

One of GCP’s big advantages is that it runs on the same infrastructure that powers Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and Maps. That means when you use GCP, you’re tapping into the exact same technology stack that keeps those global products running smoothly.

Key Categories of Google Cloud Platform Services

GCP offers hundreds of products, but they fall into a few major buckets. Let’s go through them one by one.

1. Compute Services

This is where you run your applications. GCP offers flexibility depending on whether you want full control over virtual machines, a managed container environment, or even serverless execution.

  • Compute Engine: Virtual machines that you can customize to your needs. Think of it as renting a server in Google’s data center.
  • Kubernetes Engine (GKE): A managed Kubernetes service. If you’re deploying containers at scale, this is a powerful option.
  • Cloud Functions: Serverless functions that run only when triggered. Perfect for lightweight tasks, APIs, or event-driven workloads.
  • App Engine: A fully managed platform for building and running applications. You write code, GCP handles scaling and infrastructure.

2. Storage and Databases

Every application needs somewhere to keep data. GCP has services for structured data, unstructured data, and everything in between.

  • Cloud Storage: Object storage for images, videos, backups, and more.
  • Cloud SQL: Managed MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.
  • Cloud Spanner: A globally distributed relational database with strong consistency. It’s designed for massive scale.
  • Firestore: A NoSQL document database, perfect for mobile and web apps.
  • Bigtable: A wide-column NoSQL database, great for time-series and analytical workloads.

3. Networking

Google’s global fiber network is one of its biggest strengths. With GCP, you can take advantage of that infrastructure.

  • Cloud Load Balancing: Distribute traffic across regions for reliability and performance.
  • Cloud CDN: Cache and deliver content closer to users.
  • VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): Build isolated networks with complete control over IP ranges, firewalls, and routing.
  • Cloud DNS: Highly available, low-latency DNS service.

4. Big Data and Analytics

GCP has long been a leader in data and analytics, thanks to its expertise in handling huge datasets.

  • BigQuery: A fully managed data warehouse that can query terabytes in seconds.
  • Dataflow: Stream and batch data processing.
  • Dataproc: Managed Spark and Hadoop clusters.
  • Pub/Sub: Real-time messaging for event-driven systems.

5. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

AI is one of Google’s strongest areas, and GCP makes these tools accessible.

  • Vertex AI: Build, train, and deploy machine learning models.
  • AI APIs: Pre-trained APIs for speech, vision, translation, and natural language.
  • AutoML: Train models without deep ML expertise.

6. Security and Identity

Security is built into GCP from the ground up.

  • Cloud IAM (Identity and Access Management): Control who can access what.
  • Cloud Security Command Center: Unified security risk dashboard.
  • Cloud KMS: Manage encryption keys.
  • BeyondCorp Enterprise: Zero-trust security model for organizations.

7. Developer Tools and Management

Developers need tools to build, test, and manage applications.

  • Cloud Build: CI/CD pipelines.
  • Cloud Source Repositories: Git repositories hosted on GCP.
  • Operations Suite (formerly Stackdriver): Monitoring, logging, and diagnostics.
  • Deployment Manager: Infrastructure as code.

Why Choose Google Cloud Platform Services?

With so many cloud options out there, why would someone pick GCP? Here are a few reasons:

  1. Global Infrastructure: Google’s network is one of the fastest and most extensive in the world.
  2. Data and AI Leadership: Tools like BigQuery and Vertex AI are industry leaders.
  3. Open Source Commitment: Google created Kubernetes and heavily supports open-source ecosystems.
  4. Flexible Pricing: Sustained use discounts, committed use contracts, and per-second billing help optimize costs.
  5. Security First: Built-in encryption, identity tools, and compliance certifications.

Real-World Use Cases

Let’s look at how companies actually use Google Cloud Platform services.

  • Spotify uses GCP for data processing and analytics, handling billions of music streams.
  • Twitter leverages GCP for real-time analytics.
  • Home Depot runs applications on GCP to improve customer experiences.
  • PayPal uses GCP for advanced AI and ML workloads.

Getting Started with GCP

If you’re new to Google Cloud Platform services, the easiest way to start is with the free tier. Google gives you $300 in free credits plus always-free products like Cloud Functions, BigQuery (with limits), and Firebase.

From there, think about what you actually need:

  • Want to host a website? Try App Engine or Compute Engine.
  • Need to store data? Look into Cloud Storage or Firestore.
  • Interested in analytics? Start with BigQuery.
  • Curious about AI? Experiment with Vision or Natural Language APIs.

Final Thoughts

Google Cloud Platform services cover nearly every part of modern computing—from running apps to crunching data to building machine learning models. It’s designed for businesses that want reliability, security, and access to the same tools Google itself uses. Whether you’re running a small side project or a global operation, GCP offers a flexible and powerful foundation.

If you want to future-proof your applications and tap into some of the most advanced cloud tools available, GCP is absolutely worth exploring.

Connectivity extensions & new data Types are available in Cloud SQL for PostgreSQLL

Connectivity extensions & new data Types are available in Cloud SQL for PostgreSQLL

Open-source information base PostgreSQL is intended to be effectively extensible through its help of augmentations. At the point when an expansion is stacked into an information base, it can work much the same as inherent highlights. This adds extra usefulness to your PostgreSQL occurrences, permitting you to utilize improved highlights in your information base on top of the current PostgreSQL capacities.

Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL has added uphold for more than ten expansions this year, permitting our clients to use the advantages of Cloud SQL oversaw information bases alongside the augmentations worked by the PostgreSQL people group.

We presented uphold for these new expansions to empower admittance to unfamiliar tables across cases utilizing postgres_fdw, eliminate swell from tables and files and alternatively reestablish the actual request of bunched files (pg_repack), oversee pages in memory from PostgreSQL (grindcore), assess the substance of information base pages at a low level (page inspect), look at the free space map, the perceivability guide and page-level perceivability information utilizing pg_freespacemap and pg_visibility, utilize a procedural language controller (PL/intermediary) to permit far off procedural calls among PostgreSQL information bases, and backing PostgreSQL-all information type.

Presently, we’re adding augmentations to help network inside information bases and to help new information types that make it simpler to store and inquiry IP locations and telephone numbers.

New expansion: blink

dblink usefulness is corresponding to the cross-information base network capacities we presented recently as PL/Proxy and postgres_fdw expansions. Contingent upon your information base engineering, you may go over circumstances when you need to inquiry information outside of your application’s information base or question a similar data set with a free exchange (self-sufficient) inside a nearby exchange. Dublin permits you to inquiry far off information bases and gives you greater adaptability and better network in your current circumstance.

You can utilize dblink as a component of a SELECT assertion for each SQL proclamation that profits results. For redundant inquiries and future use, we prescribe making a view to maintain a strategic distance from numerous code adjustments if there should be an occurrence of changes in association string or name data.

With dblink accessible now, we prescribe in most use cases to keep the information you need to an inquiry under a similar data set and influence outlines as conceivable because of unpredictability and execution overheads. Another option is to utilize the postgres_fdw augmentation for more straightforwardness, guidelines consistency, and better execution.

New information types: Ip4r and prefix

Web conventions IPv4 and IPv6 are both usually utilized today; IPv4 is Internet Protocol Version 4, while IPv6 is the up and coming age of Internet Protocol permitting a more extensive scope of IP addresses. IPv6 was presented in 1998 to supplant IPv4.

Ip4r permits you to utilize six information types to store IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and address ranges. These information types give preferable usefulness and execution over the underlying net and CIDR information types. These information types can use PostgreSQL’s capacities, for example, essential key, a special key, b-tree record, requirements, and so on

prefix information type underpins telephone number prefixes, permitting clients with call focuses and telephone frameworks who are keen on directing calls and coordinating telephone numbers and administrators to store prefix information effectively and perform tasks productively. With prefix expansion accessible, you can utilize prefix_range information type for table and list creation, cast capacity, and inquiry the table with the accompanying administrators: <=, <, =, <>, >=, >, @>, <@, &&, |, and

Evaluate the new augmentations

dblink, Ip4r, and prefix augmentations are presently accessible for you to use alongside the eight other upheld expansions on Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

MakerBot executes an inventive autoscaling solution with Cloud SQL

MakerBot executes an inventive autoscaling solution with Cloud SQL

MakerBot was one of the primary organizations to make 3D printing available and reasonable to a more extensive crowd. We currently serve one of the biggest introduce bases of 3D printers worldwide and run the biggest 3D plan network on the planet. That people group, Thingiverse, is a center for finding, making, and sharing 3D printable things. Thingiverse has more than 2,000,000 dynamic clients who utilize the stage to transfer, download, or tweak new and existing 3D models.

Before our information base movement in 2019, we ran Thingiverse on Aurora MySQL 5.6 in Amazon Web Services. Hoping to spare expenses, just as merge and settle our innovation, we decided to relocate to Google Cloud. We presently store our information in Google Cloud SQL and use Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to run our applications, instead of facilitating our own AWS Kubernetes bunch. Cloud SQL’s completely overseen administrations and highlights permit us to zero in on developing basic arrangements, including an inventive imitation autoscaling execution that gives steady, unsurprising execution. (We’ll investigate that in a piece.)

A relocation made simpler

The relocation itself had its difficulties, however, SADA—a Google Cloud Premier Partner—made it significantly less agonizing. At that point, Thingiverse’s information base had connections to our logging environment, so a personal time in the Thingiverse information base could affect the whole MakerBot biological system. We set up a live replication from Aurora over to Google Cloud, so peruses and composes would go to AWS and, from that point, dispatched to Google Cloud using Cloud SQL’s outside expert capacity.

Our present design incorporates three MySQL information bases, each on a Cloud SQL Instance. The first is a library for the inheritance application, scheduled to be dusk. The second store’s information for our fundamental Thingiverse web layer—clients, models, and their metadata (like where to discover them on S3 or gif thumbnails), relations among clients and models, and so on—has around 163 GB of information.

At long last, we store insights information for the 3D models, for example, number of downloads, clients who downloaded a model, number of acclimations to a model, etc. This information base has around 587 GB of information. We influence ProxySQL on a VM to get to Cloud SQL. For our application arrangement, the front end is facilitated on Fastly, and the back end on GKE.

Effortless oversaw administration

For MakerBot, the greatest advantage of Cloud SQL’s overseen administrations is that we don’t need to stress over them. We can focus on designing worries that bigger affect our association instead of information base administration or developing MySQL workers. It’s a more financially savvy arrangement than employing a full-time DBA or three additional architects. We don’t have to invest energy in building, facilitating, and observing a MySQL group when Google Cloud does the entirety of that privilege out of the crate.

A quicker cycle for setting up information bases

Presently, when an improvement group needs to send another application, they work out a ticket with the necessary boundaries, the code at that point gets worked out in Terraform, which stands it up, and the group is offered admittance to their information in the information base. Their holders can get to the information base, so on the off chance that they need to peruse keep in touch with it, it’s accessible to them. It just takes around 30 minutes presently to give them an information base and unmistakably more robotized measure on account of our movement to Cloud SQL.

Even though autoscaling isn’t right now incorporated into Cloud SQL, its highlights empower us to execute techniques to complete it in any case.

Our autoscaling usage

This is our answer to autoscaling. Our chart shows the Cloud SQL information base with principle and other read copies. We can have various occurrences of these, and various applications going to various information bases, all utilizing ProxySQL. We start by refreshing our checking. Every last one of these information bases has a particular caution. Within that ready’s documentation, we have a JSON structure naming the occasion and information base.

At the point when this occasion gets set off, Cloud Monitoring fires a webhook to Google Cloud Functions, at that point Cloud Functions composes information about the occurrence and the Cloud SQL example itself to Datastore. Cloud Functions additionally sends this to Pub/Sub. Inside GKE, we have the ProxySQL namespace and the daemon name space. There is a ProxySQL administration, which focuses on a reproduction set of ProxySQL cases. Each time a case fires up, it peruses the design from a Kubernetes config map object. We can have different units to deal with these solicitations.

The daemon unit gets the solicitation from Pub/Sub to scale up Cloud SQL. With the Cloud SQL API, the daemon will add/eliminate read copies from the information base occurrence until the issue is settled.

Here comes the issue—how would we get ProxySQL to refresh? It just peruses the config map at the start, so if more copies are added, the ProxySQL units won’t know about them. Since ProxySQL just peruses the config map toward the beginning, we have the Kubernetes API play out a moving redeploy of all the ProxySQL units, which just takes a couple of moments, and this way we can likewise scale here and there the quantity of ProxySQL cases dependent on the burden.

This is only one of our arrangements for future advancement on top of Google Cloud’s highlights, made simpler by how well the entirety of its incorporated administrations plays together. With Cloud SQL’s completely overseen administrations dealing with our information base tasks, our designers can return to the matter of creating and conveying inventive, business-basic arrangements.

Now a days students,universities and Employees are connected with cloud Sql

Now a days students,universities and Employees are connected with cloud Sql

At Handshake, we serve understudies and businesses the nation over, so our innovation foundation must be dependable and adaptable to ensure our clients can get to our foundation when they need it. In 2020, we’ve extended our online presence, adding virtual arrangements, and building up new associations with junior colleges and boot camps to expand the profession open doors for our understudy clients.

These progressions and our general development would have been more enthusiastic to actualize on Heroku, our past cloud administration stage. Our site application, running on Rails, utilizes a sizable group and PostgreSQL as our essential information store. As we developed, we were discovering Heroku to be progressively costly at scale.

To lessen upkeep costs, help unwavering quality, and give our groups expanded adaptability and assets, Handshake relocated to Google Cloud in 2018, deciding to have our information overseen through Google Cloud SQL.

Cloud SQL saved time and assets for new arrangements

This relocation ends up being the correct choice. After a moderately smooth movement over a six-month time frame, our information bases are totally off of Heroku now. Cloud SQL is presently at the core of our business. We depend on it for virtually every utilization case, proceeding with a sizable group and utilizing PostgreSQL as our sole proprietor of information and wellspring of truth. The entirety of our information, including data about our understudies, managers, and colleges, is in PostgreSQL. Anything on our site is meant as an information model that is reflected in our information base.

Our fundamental web application utilizes a solid information base engineering. It utilizes an occasion with one essential and one read copy and it has 60 CPUs, just about 400 GB of memory, and 2 TB of capacity, of which 80% is used.

A few Handshake groups utilize the information base, including Infrastructure, Data, Student, Education, and Employer Groups. The information group is generally collaborating with the conditional information, composing pipelines, hauling information out of PostgreSQL, and stacking it into BigQuery or Snowflake. We run a different imitation for the entirety of our information bases, explicitly for the information group, so they can trade without an exhibition hit.

With most oversaw administrations, there will consistently be the support that requires personal time, yet with Cloud SQL, all required upkeep is anything but difficult to plan. On the off chance that the Data group needs more memory, limit, or plate space, our Infrastructure group can organize and choose if we need an upkeep window or a comparable methodology that includes zero personal time.

We likewise use Memorystore as a reserve and intensely influence Elasticsearch. Our Elasticsearch record framework utilizes a different PostgreSQL occasion for bunch preparing. At whatever point there are record changes inside our principle application, we send a Pub/Sub message from which the indexers line off, and they’ll utilize that information base to assist with that preparing, placing that data into Elasticsearch, and making those lists.

Agile, adaptable, and getting ready for what’s to come

With Cloud SQL dealing with our information bases, we can give assets toward making new administrations and arrangements. If we needed to run our own PostgreSQL bunch, we’d need to employ an information base head. Without Cloud SQL’s administration level understanding (SLA) guarantees, on the off chance that we were setting up a PostgreSQL example in a Compute Engine virtual machine, our group would need to twofold in size to deal with the work that Google Cloud presently oversees. Cloud SQL likewise offers programmed provisioning and capacity limit the executives, sparing us extra important time.

We’re commonly definitely more perused hefty than composing weightily, and our likely arrangements for our information with Cloud SQL incorporate offloading a greater amount of our peruses to understand reproductions, and saving the essential for just composes, utilizing PgBouncer before the information base to choose where to send which question.

We are additionally investigating submitted use limits to cover a decent standard of our use. We need to have the adaptability to do cost-cutting and diminish our utilization where conceivable, and to understand a portion of those underlying investment funds immediately. Likewise, we’d prefer to separate the stone monument into more modest information bases to decrease the impacted span, with the goal that they can be tuned all the more viably to each utilization case.

With Cloud SQL and related administrations from Google Cloud liberating time and assets for Handshake, we can proceed to adjust and meet the developing requirements of understudies, schools, and businesses.

Internet shopping gets a Boost from Cloud SQL

Internet shopping gets a Boost from Cloud SQL

At Bluecore, we help huge scope retail marks change their customers into lifetime clients. We’ve built up a completely computerized multi-channel customized advertising stage that uses AI and man-made brainpower to convey crusades through prescient information models. Our item suite incorporates email, site, and publicizing channel arrangements, and information is at the core of all that we do, assisting our retailers with conveying customized encounters to their clients.

Since our retail showcasing clients need to get to and apply information continuously in their UI—without personal time or a drop in execution—we required another data set arrangement. Our designing group was investing important energy attempting to make and deal with our social information base, which implied less time spent on building our promoting items. We understood we required a completely overseen administration that would find a way into our current design so we could zero in on what we specialize in. Google Cloud SQL was that arrangement.

Customized shopping encounters

Our retail advertising clients can make profoundly exact missions inside the Bluecore application by applying their promoting and mission informing to target clients dependent on triggers, for example, reference source, time on page, scroll profundity, items perused, and shopping basket status. In light of those standards, our item shrewdly chooses which data should be appeared to which clients. Exceptionally customized missions can be made effectively with intuitive highlights and gadgets, for example, crusades explicit pictures, or email catch.

Our necessity for an information base was full mission creation usefulness that utilizes metadata, including kind of mission (spring up, full-page, and so forth), planned missions (Christmas, Black Friday, and so on), and focused on client sections. This mission metadata should be associated and accessible progressively inside the UI itself without hindering the retail brand’s site. So an advertiser’s client who has a high proclivity towards limits, for instance, can be demonstrated items with high limits when perusing items.

When the mission is delivered, we can quantify who drew in with the mission, what items they perused, and whether they made a buy. Those examinations are accessible to the online business advertiser and our information science group, so we can gauge which missions are best. We would then be able to utilize that data to streamline our highlights and our retail brands’ future missions.

Utilizing similar fundamental informational collections and feeds, we can attach the email abilities to the site capacities. For example, if the client hasn’t opened the email in a specific measure of time, and they visit the site, we can show them a mission. Or then again on the off chance that they’ve perused a brand’s email, we can show them an alternate offer. The email and site channels can be utilized freely or together, as per the advertiser’s inclination.

Requiring a continuous arrangement

Our first use case with Cloud SQL was around the capacity of mission data. We have a multi-inhabitant design. Our crude information, for example, client movement (clicks, sees) is put away in crude tables in BigQuery. From the outset, our mission data was put away in Datastore, which can scale effectively, yet we discovered rapidly that our information fits a social model much better and we began utilizing Cloud SQL.

On the off chance that an advertiser rolls out an improvement to one mission, it can influence numerous different missions, so we required an answer that could take that information and apply it promptly without debased execution or a requirement for personal time. This was a strategic component for Bluecore.

Picking Cloud SQL

In assessing social information bases, we took a gander at a couple of alternatives and even attempted from the start to set up our MySQL utilizing Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). In any case, we immediately understood that going to our current accomplice, Google could convey the outcomes we required while liberating time for our designers. Google Cloud SQL had the completely overseen information base abilities to give high accessibility while taking care of basic tedious errands like reinforcements, upkeep, and copies. With Google guaranteeing dependable, secure, and adaptable information bases, our architects could zero in on what we excel at, improving our promoting stage’s highlights and execution.

For instance, one element that we created is permitting our retail image customers the capacity to offer custom informing progressively. For instance, we can send a customized message offering a coupon code in return for a client’s email information exchange to a client who has seen five website pages however hasn’t yet added anything to their truck.

Cloud SQL plays well with Google Cloud’s set-up of items

Notwithstanding our BigQuery and Cloud SQL administrations, we endless supply of Google’s connected oversaw administrations over our foundation. Occasions are being sent from site pages to Google App Engine from which they are lined into Pub/Sub and handled by Kubernetes/GKE. Our UI is facilitated on App Engine also. It is incredibly simple to speak with Cloud SQL from both App Engine and GKE. Google keeps on working with us to understand the full abilities of the administrations we use, and to figure out which administrations would best quicken our development plan.