#mysqldatabases

Future applications require dynamic, AI-driven experiences at unknown scale and little downtime, thus old databases are unsuitable. At Google Cloud Next 25, Google Cloud introduced new features, performance, and migration tools to help migrate MySQL workloads to Spanner, their horizontally scaled, always-on operational database.

Moving programs from MySQL to Spanner is easier.

MySQL was not designed for today's availability and scaling needs. Manual replication and sharding are risky and complicated solutions that emerge when the firm is least ready. On self-managed databases, scale planning and implementation require expensive after-market solutions. Development teams may spend months designing and testing these solutions, delaying user-facing functionality. Due to scaling costs, firms often prepare for peak usage even if they seldom utilise it.

Future apps must do more than process transactions. Dynamic pricing, collaborative ideas, real-time fraud detection, and semantic discovery require novel data storage and querying methods.

Live MySQL-Spanner migrations are easier

Enterprises struggling to extend and modernise their applications may use Spanner to safely and quickly migrate production workloads from MySQL with little disruption. They may then use Spanner's full-text search, rich graph, integrated AI, and hands-free reliability.

Spanner migration automates schema and data transfer to consolidate petabyte-sized sharded MySQL databases in days rather than months for live cutovers. Updated built-in reverse replication synchronises data from Spanner to sharded MySQL instances for near-real-time failover in a disaster, and improved data movement templates increase throughput at lower cost and allow data transformation during migration. Finally, new Terraform configurations and CLI interface enable implementation customisation.

Better latency and fewer code and query modifications

Google Cloud adds powerful relational features to Spanner that closely map to MySQL to reduce the cost and difficulty of migrating application code and queries.

MySQL's default isolation level, repeated read, balances performance and consistency. Repeated read isolation, in preview, improves Spanner's serialisable isolation. It gives MySQL developers extra options to enhance efficiency and is familiar. Most popular workloads can see a 5x latency reduction over Spanner. The inclusion of auto_increment keys, SELECT…FOR UPDATE, and over 80 new MySQL procedures dramatically reduces the adjustments needed to migrate an application to Spanner.

A recent Forrester Consulting overall Economic Impact analysis found that Spanner gave a composite company typical of the clients polled a 132% return on investment and $7.74 million in benefits over three years. This is primarily owing to Spanner's integrated, hands-free, high availability operations and elastic scalability replacing self-managed databases. Spanner's ability to reduce unexpected downtime and system maintenance allowed development teams to capitalise on new prospects without expensive re-architecture projects or new capital expenditures.

Summary

Our Hosting Control Panel has just undergone a major uplift to help our customers keep an eye on resource usage and give them a clear idea of what features their sites are hungry for in real time.

This will help you make an informed choice about which service(s) to upgrade and thus prevent any eventual downtimes.

Visual improvements to the resource usage table

Users often get lost amidst the tons of features and resources they are bombarded with. They know that you are a great provider offering what they need, but they rarely have a clear idea of how much is left in the basket of resources.

This is why, we've tried to add a more visual touch to the resource usage table by making it more graphically informative and bell-ringing. The main idea is to keep users informed of what they have used at any given moment, so that they will know what to upgrade when the time comes and before it’s too late.

The resource usage is visualized through different colors in the progress bar:

Four progress bar colors correspond to the following resource usage situations:

Grey – the user is taking advantage of up to ⅙ of the allocated resources;

Green – the user’s resource usage is within reasonable limits and they have nothing to worry about;

Orange – the user is reaching a critical resource usage level and is advised to upgrade in order to avoid full resource exhaustion;

Red – the user has already reached a critical resource usage level and is prompted to upgrade immediately. In this case the whole section is linked to the checkout form to ease the upgrade.

NOTE: The table of resources is updated in real time, so whenever there is an update to the usage status, it will be reflected in the table without the user needing to refresh the page.

Newly added section-specific resource usage bars

In addition to the improved resource usage table, which can be accessed from within all Control Panel sections, the users will also see small progress bars dedicated to a particular feature depending on the section they are in.

Visual improvements to the My Domain Names table

Apart from the resource usage table, we've also improved the visibility of the domain names table.

Through the use of different colors, users will now be more visually alerted of the expiring and expired domain names in their hosting account.

Also, users will now be able to renew their domains directly from the table, without needing to go to the Domain Manager beforehand. This is valid for both single and bulk domain renewals.