GCP – What’s new for Google Cloud databases — December 2024

As the year winds down and we gather around the (digital) fireplace, the excitement around Google Cloud databases is ramping up! It’s been a busy season of innovation and customer success, and we’ve got a sack full of updates to share. Join us for a festive feast of news, including key announcements in the databases space, cool product updates and feature notes, inspiring customer stories, and a calendar of events to ring in the new year. So grab a cup of hot cocoa, settle in, and let’s unwrap the latest happenings from Google Cloud databases.

Key database announcements 

• [Forrester Wave] Google was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Translytical Data Platforms, Q4 2024 report, earning the highest score possible in 11 criteria, including vision, innovation, gen AI/LLM, real-time analytics, and data security. We believe this recognition solidifies AlloyDB as Google Cloud’s fastest-growing database and a top choice for supporting transactional and analytical workloads with exceptional performance, availability, and scale.

• [New Generative AI Whitepaper] As a developer, you know the power of data. But are you harnessing the full potential of generative AI? Gen AI can help revolutionize your database applications, enabling hyper-personalization, increased productivity, and deeper insights. Read our new whitepaper today to discover the four pillars of successful gen AI database apps.

Database product updates

Cloud SQL

• Private Service Connect (PSC) Automation capability is in Preview – Customers can automate the creation of Cloud SQL PSC endpoints in their VPCs and simplify the deployment of Cloud SQL at scale.

• Cloud SQL integration with Certificate Authority Service (CAS) is in Preview – Now customers can create Cloud SQL instances with a shared CA (Certificate Authority) option to simplify TLS certificate management

• Advanced DR for PostgreSQL and MySQL now in GA – Advanced DR, a combination of switchover and replica failover along with a write Eendpoint (in Preview), provides seamless disaster recovery testing and execution without requiring application changes.

• Cloud SQL Enterprise Plus for PostgreSQL and MySQL got two new features that improve availability:

• Data cache enable/disable – Allows users to enable or disable data cache with near-zero downtime for MySQL and PostgreSQL primary instances.

• Instance scaledown – Near-zero downtime is now available for infrequent instance scaledowns on Enterprise Plus for MySQL and PostgreSQL primary instances.

AlloyDB for PostgreSQL

• Model endpoint management allows customers to access third-party and custom hosted models directly from their database. The extension enabling AI model predictions and embedding generation is now installed by default in new databases. Vertex AI’s latest models are available with no setup.

• AlloyDB now supports up to 128 TiB storage per cluster in all regions where AlloyDB is available.

• You can set up AlloyDB clusters using a copy of your Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL backup. This feature is in Preview. 

• AlloyDB now supports in-place major version upgrade in Preview – Customers can upgrade their AlloyDB cluster from PostgreSQL version 14 to version 15.

• AlloyDB Omni version 15.7.0 is now GA.

• The AlloyDB Omni Kubernetes operator version 1.2.0 is now GA.

Memorystore

• Single shard clusters – Memorystore for Redis Cluster is now GA. This enables customers to create Memorystore instances with a single shard, and dynamically scale the instance size up or down while maintaining their 99.99% SLA with multi-zone instances having replicas.

• Node-level metrics – Memorystore for Redis Cluster is now GA. Node-level metrics empower Memorystore customers with the advanced monitoring capabilities to better manage their clusters.

• OSS Autoscaler – Memorystore Cluster now in GA – OSS autoscaler ensures that customer clusters are automatically optimized for performance, capacity, and budget. 

Spanner

• Cassandra to Spanner Proxy Adapter is now GA – This  open-source tool migrates Cassandra workloads to Spanner without application changes. Read our blog post on how the new Cassandra to Spanner adapter simplifies Yahoo’s migration journey.

• Directed reads feature is now GA – Spanner provides the flexibility to route read traffic (except in RW transactions) to a specific replica type or region within a multi-region instance configuration or a custom regional configuration with optional read-only region(s).

• Query Optimizer version 7 is now in GA – Spanner’s query optimizer now rewrites OR operators on indexed columns as a UNION MERGE, improving efficiency by avoiding full table scans

• Usage statistics and insights dashboard for database splits is now GA – Spanner’s new observability feature helps identify and address performance hotspots by showing how data is distributed across splits (slide).

• Spanner now supports using multiple, single-region customer-managed encryption keys in Cloud Key Management (KMS) to protect databases in custom, dual-region, and multi-region instance configurations.

Bigtable

• Bigtable is now available in the northamerica-south1 (Mexico) region. Check out all the Bigtable locations.

• Data Boost for Bigtable is in Preview – You can now create a Data Boost app profile and view Data Boost metrics in the Google Cloud console (doc)

Firestore

• Firestore Custom Organization Policies is now GA – It allows customers to set custom restrictions on Firestore database operations.

• Firestore Key Access Justifications (KAJ) is now GA – Key access justifications provide customers with more control over data access and the ability to manage key access requests.

• Monitoring page on Firestore console allows customers to view available metrics, create a custom dashboard, and set alerts directly from the Firestore console.

• Datastore v1 Java Client Side Tracing with OpenTelemetry allows customers to collect and view distributed traces from Datastore v1 API in Cloud Trace for performance monitoring and debugging. 

• Reliability Recommender feature is now GA – It uses Active Assist to provide recommendations for improving database reliability and disaster recovery.

Businesses transforming with Google Cloud databases

Discover how Google Cloud database solutions are driving innovation and success:

• Ford Pro Intelligence leverages Google Cloud’s Bigtable to harness the power of connected vehicle data, providing real-time insights and predictive maintenance for fleets of all sizes.

• Unity Ads unlocked incredible performance by migrating to Memorystore for Redis Cluster. Their infrastructure now handles a staggering 10 million Redis operations per second on a single instance, delivering incredible speed and scalability. This move also freed up their team to focus on high-value activities, all while reducing infrastructure costs.

• Tricent Security Group boosted database performance and scalability with AlloyDB for PostgreSQL. They now handle 250 million daily transactions with faster query response times, solving performance bottlenecks and positioning themselves for future growth.

• Palo Alto Networks boosted performance and slashed costs by switching their Advanced WildFire product from Cassandra to Bigtable, resulting in 5x lower latency and cutting their total cost of ownership in half.

• Flipkart boosted its streaming analytics performance by migrating from Apache HBase to Bigtable. This move increased developer productivity, enhanced database performance, and enabled them to handle fluctuating customer demand with ease.

Database webinars and events

Product webinars 

• Fire up your innovation engine with Spanner: Today’s applications demand more than traditional databases can deliver. In this webinar, we explore Spanner, the ‘always-on’ globally available database that scales effortlessly to power your next-generation innovations.

• Maximize performance with Cloud SQL and Memorystore: In this webinar, we’ll show you the combined power of CloudSQL and Memorystore in order to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and deliver exceptional application experiences.

Cloud Wars with Bob Evans
In this episode of Cloud Wars, Bobby Brauer, head of geospatial data engineering at Bayer, discusses their innovative use of AlloyDB. Bayer is using AlloyDB to overcome data challenges in agriculture. AlloyDB provides low-latency data processing and high availability, crucial for handling spikes in data flow during harvest season. Learn how Bayer is transforming geospatial data processing to enhance efficiency and drive data-driven decision-making.

Merv Adrian x Apex Fintech | AlloyDB
In the rapidly evolving PostgreSQL DBMS landscape, AlloyDB is emerging as a top choice for organizations with demanding workloads. Join Merv Adrian for an interview with Apex Fintech, a leading provider of brokerage and wealth management services, as they share their experience with AlloyDB and how it helps them achieve high availability and robust security.

Get started

Google Cloud offers the only suite of industry-leading databases built on planet-scale infrastructure and for AI. Learn more and start a free trial today:

• Get started with a 30-day AlloyDB free trial instance.

• Create a 90-day Spanner free trial instance with 10 GB of storage at no cost.

• New customers get $300 in free credits to try Cloud SQL.