Creating Instances

A Google Cloud SQL instance is a MySQL database hosted in Google's cloud. To create an instance, you must be a project team owner or editor. If this is not the case, ask a current owner on the project team to add you to the team by following the instructions in Adding a Project Member.

To create an instance:

Developers Console

Go to the Google Developers Console.
Create a new Developers Console project, or open an existing project by clicking on the project name.
In the sidebar on the left, click Storage > Cloud SQL to show a list of Cloud SQL instances for the project.
Click New Instance to create a new Cloud SQL instance in your project.
Enter a name for the instance.
An instance name must meet the following criteria:
- Be unique within the project.
- Contain between 1 and 99 lowercase letters, hyphens, or numbers.
  If you plan on using this instance for replication, the instance's full name (including project name, colon, and instance name) must be equal to or less than 39 characters in length.
- Start with a lowercase letter.
The instance name you specify is automatically combined with your project name, and any domain-specific names as shown here:
- Non-domain: your-project-name:your-instance-name
- Domain-specific: your-domain:your-project-name:your-instance-name
Note: You cannot re-use an instance name for up to two months after deleting an instance using the name.
Optionally, continue to configure the instance. Or, to accept the default values for the instance settings, skip this step.
Additional configuration
1. Select a Region for your instance, either United States (default), European Union, or Asia. All Cloud SQL instances in the United States are run in the US-Central region in order to provided lower latencies from both Google Compute Engine and Google App Engine.
2. Select a Tier. Changing the tier will change the pricing under Billing Plan.
3. Select a Database Version, MySQL 5.5 (default) or MySQL 5.6.
4. Select a Billing Plan, per use or package. The default values are the D1 tier and per use billing. For more information about tiers and billing plans, see Packages Billing Plan.
5. Select a Preferred Location which can be either a Google Compute Engine zone or a Google App Engine application. When you choose a location, Google guarantees low latency between the location and your Cloud SQL instance.
  1. If you select Specify Compute Engine zone, you must also pick a zone.
  2. If you select Specify App Engine application, you must also specify the App Engine application ID.
  Note: If the instance was created in the Asia region, then you can only select a Google Compute Engine zone as the preferred location.
6. Configure Backups for the instance.
  - You can Enable backups and choose a backup window. When backups are enabled, your instance is backed up once a day. For more information, see Backups.
  - Select whether Binary Log is enabled or disabled. It is disabled by default for a new instance. Enable binary logging if you want to perform point-in-time recovery of the instance. For more information, see Backups and Recovery.
7. Select an Activation Policy. You can choose On Demand, Always On, or Never. When the activation policy for an instance is Always On, the instance will always be active. For the Per Use Billing Plan, setting the activation policy of an instance to Always On will impact how the usage is charged for the instance. For more information, see the How is use of my instance calculated? FAQ.
8. Select a File System Replication mode, either synchronous (default) or asynchronous. For information about the difference between the two modes, see the How is my data replicated? FAQ.
9. If you will connect to the instance from an external network, using an IPv4 address, assign an IPv4 address to your instance. Note that idle hours of IPv4 addresses incur charges as described in the pricing page.
  Each instance has an IPv6 address that you can use to connect if your system and tools support the IPv6 protocol. Using an instance's IPv6 address does not incur any charges.
  Note: Don't assign an IPv4 address to your instance if you can use the instance IPv6 to connect.
10. Add Authorized Networks that can connect to the instance using either its IPv4 or IPv6 address. Using tools like MySQL Client, you can connect to your instance from the whitelisted addresses. For more information, see Configuring Access Control for IP Connections.
11. If you have Google App Engine applications that will connect to your instance, add them in the Authorized App Engine Applications section. You can add or remove applications from this list at any time. For more information, see Configuring Access for App Engine Applications.
12. Custom MySQL flags allow you to configure and tune your database. In the MySQL Flags section, choose one of the flags that can be set and provide a value. If you don't set any flags now, you can edit the instance settings at any time later to configure some. For more information about MySQL flags, see Setting MySQL Flags.
Click Save to create the instance.
It may take several moments before the instance is ready to use. The Status field on the instance summary page displays "Runnable" when your instance is ready to use.

Cloud SDK

Install the Cloud SQL command line if you haven't already (see Managing Instances Using the Cloud SDK).
Set the project to the one where you want to create the instance.
```
$ gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID
```
Create the instance.
The simplest create command specifies only the instance name.
```
$ gcloud sql instances create YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME
```
If you plan on using this instance for replication, the instance name must be 39 characters or less in length.

Here is an example of create command that specifies tier, region, and pricing plan.
```
$ gcloud sql instances create YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME \
  --tier TIER \
  --region REGION \
  --pricing-plan PRICING_PLAN
```
For details about all the options you can specify in the instances create command, run gcloud sql instances create --help or see the instances create command in the Cloud SDK documentation.
You can check that the instance was created by using the instances describe command.
```
$ gcloud sql instances describe YOUR_INSTANCE_NAME
```

After you create an instance, you can start using it. Here are several common next steps for using your Google Cloud SQL instance:

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Last updated March 24, 2015.

Creating Instances

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