As we all know, Google's history goes back to a company focused on search engine and online advertising. However, in the year 2008, Google took a bold step by into the world of cloud computing with the launch of its development platform, Google App Engine, marking the start of Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
But, What is GCP? Google Cloud is Google's cloud services platform, which offers a wide range of services and tools for businesses and developers. It is a global infrastructure that enables organizations to host and run applications, store and analyze data, which benefits from the power of the cloud to optimize and scale their operations.
Google Cloud provides services in different areas, including computing, storage, databases, data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), security, and much more. Customers can access these services under a pay-as-you-go model, allowing them to pay only for the resources and services they actually use.
GCP is based on the same infrastructure that Google uses for its consumer products, such as Google Search, Gmail and YouTube. This means that GCP is scalable, reliable, and can handle large workloads. GCP is also very secure, and has a variety of security features to protect user data.
As GCP evolved, Google was including more and more services, where today it offers us a wide range of database services that we will talk about, including relational databases, and NoSQL databases. These services can be used to store, manage, and analyze data from a variety of sources, including web apps, mobile apps, and IoT devices.
Thanks to innovation by part of Google, today GCP is considered by Gartner in its Magic Quadrant as a leader in 2022 for cloud database management systems.
GCP Database Features
Google Cloud databases offer a variety of features, including:
- Scalability: Google Cloud databases can be Vertical scaling (scaling up or down) adding more resources or Horizontal scaling (scaling out or in) adding more nodes to meet the needs of the workloads.
- Reliability: Google Cloud databases are designed to be highly reliable and have a variety of features to guarantee the availability of your data.
- Security: Google Cloud databases are very secure and have a variety of features and services to protect the data.
- Easy to use: Google Cloud databases are easy to use and come with a variety of tools and documentation to help you get started.
Database Services Portfolio
Google Cloud has a wide range of database services for both relational and NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases.
Relational databases
Relational databases are the most common and are used to store structured data, such as numbers, text, and dates. The most popular GCP relational databases are:
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This is the ideal option for those looking for a fully managed relational database. Cloud SQL is compatible with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server allowing easy migration from on-premise solutions or from other cloud providers. This solution is perfect for web, mobile, and e-commerce applications that require high availability and consistent performance. |
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It is a global-scale relational database that enables synchronous replication across different regions, providing high availability and data consistency across the worldwide. Cloud Spanner is ideal for large-scale enterprise applications that require low latency, strong consistency, and allows support for two SQL dialects: GoogleSQL (ANSI 2011 with extensions) and PostgreSQL. |
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AlloyDB for PostgreSQL is a fully managed PostgreSQL-compliant database service, designed for the most demanding workloads, including hybrid analytical and transactional processing. AlloyDB is 4x faster than PostgreSQL for standard transactional workloads. |
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The Bare Metal Solution for Oracle on Google Cloud is a service that allow to run an Oracle Database instance on Google Cloud infrastructure. This solution provides greater control over the Oracle Database environment, while providing access to the same features and benefits that Google Cloud offers to all customers. |
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BigQuery is a fully managed petabyte-scale analytical data warehouse that allows businesses to analyze all data very quickly. It's a serverless service that automatically scales up and down to meet demand, so there's no need to worry about managing hardware or software. BigQuery is widely used for enterprise data analysis, big data analysis, business intelligence, pattern detection, trends, and more. |
Key-value databases
Key-value databases are a type of NoSQL (Not Only SQL) database that store data in key-value pairs. Each stored data is associated with a unique key that acts as an identifier to access or retrieve that value.
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NoSQL database service with Enterprise-grade, HBase-compliant, high-performance, with sub-10 millisecond latency, unlimited scalability, and 99.999% availability for large analytical and operational workloads. |
Document databases
Document databases are a type of NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases that store and manage data in document format. Each document can contain information in JSON, BSON (Binary JSON) or XML format, and is stored together with a unique key that identifies it.
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NoSQL database service document-based with fully managed, scalable, serverless. Designed for web and mobile applications, this document database allows for fast data retrieval and updating in real time, making it ideal for gaming, social networking, and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. |
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Firebase Realtime Database is a real-time database provided by Firebase, Google's web and mobile application development platform. It is a NoSQL database that allows real-time data synchronization between users and devices, making it easy to build collaborative and real-time applications. |
In-memory databases
In-memory databases are a type of database that stores and manipulates data in the main memory (RAM) of the system instead of storing it on a hard drive or other persistent storage medium. This allows extremely fast access and processing of data, as there is no need to perform read and write operations on a slower medium such as disk.
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Memorystore is a service that provides in-memory storage solutions with fully managed and scalable. Specifically, it offers two types of in-memory databases: Memorystore for Redis and Memorystore for Memcached. |
Conclusion
Google Cloud databases offer a wide range of options and services, making them a solid choice for any business or developer looking for data storage and management solutions make it efficient, scalable, and secure in the cloud. The diversity of options and integration with other Google Cloud services make it an attractive platform for building modern and scalable applications in the cloud.
I hope this information is useful and in future articles I will expand in more detail on each of the Google Cloud database services.
Best Regards,
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