Migrating from MySQL to Spanner is easier now

Improved latency with fewer code and query changes

To further reduce the cost and complexity of migrating application code and queries, we introduced a rich new set of relational capabilities in Spanner that map closely to MySQL. 

Repeatable read is the default isolation level in MySQL, balancing  performance and consistency. We’re excited to bring this flexibility to Spanner as well. New repeatable read isolation, now in preview, complements Spanner’s existing serializable isolation. It will be familiar to MySQL developers and gives them additional tools to significantly improve performance. In fact, most common workloads can see up to a 5x latency improvement compared to what was possible in Spanner previously. In addition, new auto_increment keys, SELECT…FOR UPDATE, and close to 80 new MySQL functions dramatically reduce the changes required to migrate an application to Spanner. 

“As our calendar sharing service gained popularity, demand grew steadily. At 55 million users, we hit Aurora MySQL’s scalability limits for both data volume and active connections. But scalability wasn’t the only issue. Our app teams spent too much time managing the database, leaving less for feature development. Fully managed Spanner solved this, significantly cutting costs and enabling future growth. Migrations are challenging, but with Google Cloud support and the Spanner migration tool, we completed it successfully with minimal downtime.” – Eiki Kanai, SRE Manager, TimeTree

A recent Total Economic Impact study from Forrester Consulting also found that Spanner provided a 132% ROI and $7.74M of total benefits over three years for a composite organization representative of interviewed customers. This comes largely from retiring self-managed databases and taking advantage of Spanner’s elastic scalability and built-in, hands-free, high availability operations. Forrester found that decreased disruptions from unplanned downtime and system maintenance with Spanner reduced time to onboard new apps and allowed development teams to address new opportunities without complex re-architecture projects or new capital expenditures.

Get started today

To learn more about how Spanner can take the stress out of your organization’s next growth milestone and set your development teams up for success, visit https://cloud.google.com/spanner. There, you’ll find reference architectures, examples of successful migrations, and a directory of qualified partners to help with a free assessment. Read up on how to run a successful migration from MySQL. Or try Spanner yourself today with a 90-day free trial and production instances starting around $65 USD/month.