Google launches 2nd generation of its Cloud SQL service, with up to 10TB per instance

Google is today announcing the beta availability of the second generation of the Google Cloud SQL service, a hosted version of the MySQL database. The second generation offers greater performance and storage than the original version, which first launched in 2011.

The new version of Cloud SQL can scale up to 10 terabytes, 15,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS), and 104GB of RAM, Google Cloud Platform product manager Brett Hesterberg wrote in a blog post on the news.

And Google clearly wants developers to try the service. The company is offering a $300 credit and applying Google’s sustained use discount during the beta phase, Hesterberg wrote.

The business of traditional SQL databases is a big one. Google’s top competitor in the cloud market, Amazon Web Services, has gotten more serious about it in the past year and rolled out the enterprise-grade Aurora database engine, along with a database migration tool.

Google has been busy rolling out entirely new features, too, in addition to boosting performance and scalability. Most recently, Google has started offering a Cloud CDN for caching content closer to users. Google also strives to keep its prices lower than Amazon Web Services.

Indeed, Google is promising that the second-generation Cloud SQL offers better pricing for the same performance relative to the first generation. But only time will tell if upgrades like this lead to many more companies signing up to run their applications with the Google cloud.

Google certainly looks more determined lately to win the hearts and credit card numbers of developers at big companies. Last month Diane Greene, a highly respected Silicon Valley figure who cofounded server virtualization company VMware, became the head of all of Google’s cloud businesses as a result of Google’s acquisition of her startup Bebop.