Google Boosts Speed Of Cloud SQL Database Service

Google’s Cloud SQL database services just got faster after the company ramped up several technical specifications aimed at increasing cloud performance for its enterprise customers.

Among the key improvements are a four-times increase – from 4GB RAM to 16 GB RAM – in the amount of data that can be cached, as well as a new option for asynchronous replication, which provides the write performance of a nonreplicated database with the availability of a replicated database, according to the company. Also being beefed up is the storage space available to customers on Cloud SQL, with 100GB now available, which is 10 times the 10GB that previously was available.

Faster retrieval

The upgrades were announced on 8 November in a post by Joe Faith, App Engine product manager, on the Official Google Enterprise Blog.

“Anytime your user tries to retrieve information from the app or update settings, it should happen instantly,” wrote Faith. “For the best performance, you need faster, larger databases – especially if you have a growing user base to serve.”

Google’s Cloud SQL service resides in Google’s cloud and is part of the company’s expanding business cloud offerings, which allow enterprises to leverage Google’s powerful infrastructure to get their work done. The performance upgrades for the Cloud SQL offering will allow users to have faster access to more data so they can now work with bigger, faster MySQL databases in the cloud, according to Google.

Under the service upgrades, users will also now be able to choose where they want to run their Cloud SQL database instances in Google data centres in the United States or in Europe. The service also will feature integration with the Google Apps Script, which means users will be able to publish and share data with Google Sheets, add data to Google Sites pages, or create simple Google Forms without worrying about hosting or configuring servers, according to the company.

To unveil the new features, Google is introducing a free six-month trial offer to allow users to try the new services. The free trial will include one Cloud SQL instance with 0.5GB of storage and will be available until 1 June, 2013.

Google has been working hard to bring more enterprises into its cloud in recent months.

Learning abou the cloud

In July, it launched its Google Cloud Platform Partner Programme to bring consultants and vendors together to help customers learn how the cloud can help them.

The new Google Cloud Platform Partner Programme, unveiled on 24 July, enables service and technology partners to work with Google to provide services for and extend the functionality of Google’s Cloud Platform suite of products. The service partners will provide consulting and implementation services for Google Cloud Platform products, such as Google App Engine, Google Compute Engine, BigQuery and Google Cloud Storage.

Google announced the programme in a blog post that aims to show potential customers how they can take advantage of the same huge infrastructure that powers the search company.

The creation of the partner programme also marks another big step for Google as it seeks new revenue streams beyond advertising and search. It also puts Google on the same footing as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, which have long-established partner programmes for their various services.

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