[HN Gopher] Cloud Spanner now with a free tier
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Cloud Spanner now with a free tier
Author : config_yml
Score : 62 points
Date : 2022-09-15 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cloud.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cloud.google.com)
| googledtest wrote:
| This is the next iteration to make Cloud Spanner more accessible
| for developers to start using a scalable relational database that
| values consistency AND availability.
|
| If anyone wants to try out Spanner without cost, this is a great
| option. There's also a pretty cool starting experience in terms
| of in-console tutorial to set up a sample app on Spanner.
|
| I'd love to get feedback on getting started with Spanner.
|
| Disclaimer: as my username suggest, I work at Google, quite
| closely with the Cloud Spanner team.
| pphysch wrote:
| Does the postgresql interface support jsonb?
| googledtest wrote:
| Not currently, but it's definitely something the team has
| received feedback for.
| ivanvanderbyl wrote:
| Does it support Postgis or other extensions?
| choppaface wrote:
| Can you please as your PR and PMs to change the wording here so
| it's so so misleading that the offering is NOT a free tier but
| rather a trial?
|
| In general Ive had pretty ridiculous trouble with GCloud reps
| pushing their practices and mindesets on me, across several
| large contracts and companies. Your team dearly needs to work
| on basic communication. As Sundar has said publicly, Google as
| a whole needs to earn back user trust. As a corporate GCloud
| user (not my choice), you have obliterated it time and time
| again, and these sorts of fake free announcements really don't
| help your case.
| teraflop wrote:
| As far as I can see, the wording on Google's pages is fine.
| It's just that someone else submitted it to HN under an
| editorialized title.
| rdxm wrote:
| endisneigh wrote:
| Seems silly to not make it free forever for say, 1gb storage and
| certain amounts of reads and writes a month.
|
| If cost isn't an issue my experience is that spanner is the best,
| problem is there's no way to know this without paying a lot
| marune wrote:
| Is there something that explains the Pros/Cons of Spanner vs
| their new AlloyDB offering?
|
| Both have a PostgreSQL compatibility layer...
| teraflop wrote:
| Just from a glance at the AlloyDB documentation, it seems to be
| fundamentally a similar design to PostgreSQL. That is, you have
| a single primary instance that holds the entire dataset and
| handles all write traffic, plus some number of additional
| replicas within the system for failover and read-only queries.
|
| Spanner has a very different implementation: your dataset is
| split into (possibly a large number of) shards, each of which
| is replicated across multiple regions. So you get better global
| availability and scalability, at the cost of more complicated
| performance characteristics when you have to do operations that
| involve multiple shards.
| mdasen wrote:
| I think the difference is that AlloyDB is basically PostgreSQL
| where they've modified how it's storing things to offer better
| performance via better integration with Google's infrastructure
| - like what Amazon did with AuroraDB. That means that AlloyDB
| is compatible with all the stuff you're used to using with
| PostgreSQL.
|
| Spanner is a very different database. They've included a
| PostgreSQL query-language compatibility layer, but that isn't
| the same as being "100% compatible." You'll still be dealing
| with some Spanner concepts like not wanting to hot-spot your
| writes. Spanner does allow really scaling out and a truly
| distributed database while AlloyDB is an improvement via better
| integration with Google's infrastructure, but still mostly the
| same model.
|
| Aurora/Alloy do have advantages by decoupling the storage from
| the server instances including performance and resiliency, but
| Spanner is really creating a horizontally scalable, distributed
| database - with some trade-offs.
| acdha wrote:
| As an aside to any Google people here, not having error handling
| in your JavaScript is a bad idea - that blank page does not shout
| "you should trust your most sensitive data to us" even if I know
| those are separate teams.
|
| Echoing other people, limiting it to 90 days / 10GB is an odd
| choice - if you need Spanner, you're likely to bump into both of
| those limitations, especially if you're not already a GCP user.
| Databases are a critical service and it takes time to evaluate
| one.
| qeternity wrote:
| > if you need Spanner, you're likely to bump into both of those
| limitations
|
| That's the point: if you _need_ spanner, Google wants your
| money.
|
| This is intended as a way for people to play around with it
| free of charge, in the hopes that they will realize they need
| it.
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| Or just use cockroachdb on free teir.
| bcjordan wrote:
| Can we update the title to say Free trial? The minimum tier is
| still $40/month (though that is a huge improvement and makes this
| a reasonable option for startups).
|
| Was really hoping for something that could scale to zero. Better
| than no change!
| choppaface wrote:
| Yeah this article is just pure spam. Google Cloud has always
| had a max $300 free trial and the change here is now you do
| Spanner woooptie wooo. The offering is not at all like AWS free
| tier.
| Havoc wrote:
| Google has permanent free tier that is perpetual too.
|
| Stuff like the free VM is perpetually which to my knowledge
| has not equivalent aws freebie
| spankalee wrote:
| This sounds different from other GCP free tiers that don't have a
| time limit. The post says Spanner is free for 90 days only.
|
| I wish Spanner had both a fully free tier and was fully managed
| like Firestore.
| [deleted]
| GabeWeiss_ wrote:
| Yah, the title's not 100% right. :) There isn't a free TIER of
| Spanner. This is a 90 day free trial.
| bearjaws wrote:
| No software company goes from 0 to Cloud Spanner in 90 days...
| Any new company will continue to use Postgres.
|
| If GCP was smart they would make it free for life, then one in
| every 3000 customers would blow up and they could charge Oracle
| prices.
| booi wrote:
| > one in every 3000 customers would blow up and they could
| charge Oracle prices.
|
| don't give them any ideas..
| tmpz22 wrote:
| I think Spanner has always been targeted largely at mid-
| enterprise and bigger companies. Its potentially a VERY sticky
| product that may be tremendously difficult to offboard from.
| Small concessions like this 90 day trial doesn't really change
| that.
|
| Especially with my understanding that a lot of GCP leadership
| is ex-Oracle, the whole vibe of Spanner seems to be a run at
| Oracle's marketshare.
| Jyaif wrote:
| So that hackers don't waste time looking at Spanner: The price
| starts at north of 300$ per month
| (https://cloud.google.com/spanner/pricing)
|
| [edit] I'm apparently wrong.
|
| This is still a masterclass in how not to do a pricing page IMO.
| teraflop wrote:
| If I'm reading that page right, the actual minimum cost (in us-
| west1) is $65.70/month, because a "node" is $657/month, but if
| you look elsewhere in the documentation, it says a single
| "instance" can be as small as 1/10 of a node.
|
| I have no idea why they chose to structure the pricing model
| this way, but it makes the entry-level cost look a lot worse
| than it really is.
| pxx wrote:
| It's a historical artifact of how you used to buy it.
| https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/use-
| spanner...
| googledtest wrote:
| It might also be worth pointing out that 'node' does not
| reference underlying server.
|
| In a PG or similar architecture, node might be used to
| specify how many "nodes" are in a replicated setup for high
| availability purposes.
|
| In Spanner, "Node" is a measure of compute capacity (as is
| the finer-grain processing units) allowing you to scale
| up/down without impacting an application's workload.
|
| All instances get high availability regardless of number of
| nodes or processing units, and the specifics of this are
| handled by the configuration.
| GabeWeiss_ wrote:
| This isn't true at all. Where are you getting your numbers
| from?
| googledtest wrote:
| That may have been true at one point, but now you can use
| Spanner closer to $60-70 a month factoring in storage (and even
| cheaper with committed use discounts) after upgrading from the
| free trial instance.
| https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/use-spanner...
| clhodapp wrote:
| It appears to be a (90 day) free trial rather than a (long-term)
| free tier.
| GabeWeiss_ wrote:
| Yup, correct. The title here isn't right. It's a free trial,
| not a free tier.
| asim wrote:
| Technology behind spanner is incredible but unfortunately
| marketed horribly and positioned terribly. It was a solution
| built for large scale enterprise and no one else. It's not worth
| trying to sell this to developers. They're better off layering
| something else on top with a different brand and pricing model.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Bad marketing, bad pricing, bad positioning. It's crazy.
| Amazing technology.
| bushbaba wrote:
| its a solution built for google where they need to track ad
| budget burn down globally. Most enterprises dont have this
| problem, or the latency/performance/uptime requirements of
| google.
|
| Then you've got a google proprietary API for what should be
| similar to Aurora with PostgreSQL wire compatibility.
|
| Add in Google's history of deprecating and non-backwards
| compatible changes to SDKs.
|
| That makes you wonder, who exactly Spanner IS geared towards.
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