What is Google Cloud SQL?

Cloud SQL is GCP's fully managed relational database service supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. Google handles backups, replication, failover, encryption, and patches. Key features: High availability: synchronous replication to a standby instance with automatic failover; 99.95% SLA. Read replicas: offload read traffic. Automatic storage increases: no manual capacity planning. Cloud SQL Proxy: secure, encrypted connection without needing whitelisted IPs — the standard way to connect applications to Cloud SQL. Private IP: deploy inside a VPC for security. Point-in-time recovery: restore to any second within the backup window. Cloud SQL is suitable for lift-and-shift of existing relational database workloads to GCP.