Regional and multi-region configurations

This page describes instance configurations and the two types of instance configurations that Spanner offers: regional configurations and multi-region configurations. It also describes the differences and trade-offs between regional and multi-region configurations.

Instance configurations

An instance configuration defines the geographic placement and replication of the databases in that instance. When you create an instance, you must configure it as either regional (all the resources are contained within a single Google Cloud region) or multi-region (the resources span more than one region). You make this choice by selecting an instance configuration, which determines where your data is stored for that instance.

The instance configurations with fixed regions and replication topologies are referred to as base instance configurations. You can create custom instance configurations and add additional optional read-only replicas. Note that you cannot change the replication topology of base instance configurations. For more information, see Read-only replicas.

You can also move your instance from any instance configuration to any other regional or multi-region instance configuration.

Regional configurations

Google Cloud services are available in locations across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. If your users and services are located within a single region, choose a regional instance configuration for the lowest-latency reads and writes.

For any base regional configuration, Spanner maintains three read-write replicas, each within a different Google Cloud zone in that region. Each read-write replica contains a full copy of your operational database that is able to serve read-write and read-only requests. Spanner uses replicas in different zones so that if a single-zone failure occurs, your database remains available.

Available configurations

Spanner offers the following base regional instance configurations:

Base Configuration Name Region Description Optional Region
Americas
northamerica-northeast1 Montréal leaf icon Low CO2
northamerica-northeast2 Toronto leaf icon Low CO2
southamerica-east1 São Paulo leaf icon Low CO2
southamerica-west1 Santiago leaf icon Low CO2
us-central1 Iowa leaf icon Low CO2 Read-only: asia-northeast1 1-OR
asia-south1 1-OR
europe-west2 1-OR
europe-west9 1-OR
us-east1 South Carolina Read-only: us-central1 1-OR
us-west1 1-OR
us-east4 Northern Virginia
us-east5 Columbus
us-south1 Dallas
us-west1 Oregon leaf icon Low CO2
us-west2 Los Angeles
us-west3 Salt Lake City
us-west4 Las Vegas
Europe
europe-central2 Warsaw
europe-north1 Finland leaf icon Low CO2
europe-southwest1 Madrid
europe-west1 Belgium leaf icon Low CO2 Read-only: us-central1 1-OR
us-west1 1-OR
europe-west2 London leaf icon Low CO2
europe-west3 Frankfurt leaf icon Low CO2
europe-west4 Netherlands
europe-west6 Zürich leaf icon Low CO2
europe-west8 Milan
europe-west9 Paris leaf icon Low CO2
europe-west10 Berlin
europe-west12 Turin
Asia Pacific
asia-east1 Taiwan
asia-east2 Hong Kong
asia-northeast1 Tokyo
asia-northeast2 Osaka
asia-northeast3 Seoul
asia-south1 Mumbai
asia-south2 Delhi
asia-southeast1 Singapore
asia-southeast2 Jakarta
australia-southeast1 Sydney
australia-southeast2 Melbourne
Middle East
me-central1 Doha
me-central2 Dammam
me-west1 Tel Aviv
Africa
africa-south1 Johannesburg

Replication

Base regional configurations contain three read-write replicas. Every Spanner mutation requires a write quorum that's composed of a majority of voting replicas. Write quorums are formed from two out of the three replicas in regional configurations. For more information about leader regions and voting replicas, see Replication.

You can create a custom regional instance configuration and add optional read-only replicas. Read-only replicas can help scale reads and support low latency stale reads. These read-only replicas don't take part in the write quorums, and they don't affect the Spanner >= 99.99% SLA for regional instances. You can add locations listed under the Optional Region column as optional read-only replica(s). If you don't see your chosen read-only replica location, you can request a new optional read-only replica region. For more information, see Read-only replicas.

Performance best practices for regional configurations

For optimal performance, follow these best practices:

Multi-region configurations

Spanner regional configurations replicate data between multiple zones within a single region. However, a regional configuration might not be optimal if:

  • Your application often needs to read data from multiple geographic locations (for example, to serve data to users in both North America and Asia).
  • Your writes originate from a different location than your reads (for example, if you have large write workloads in North America and large read workloads in Europe).

Multi-region configurations can:

  • Serve writes from multiple regions.
  • Maintain availability in the case of regional failures.
  • Provide higher availability and SLAs than regional configurations.

Multi-region configurations let you replicate the database's data in multiple zones across multiple regions, as defined by the instance configuration. These additional replicas let you read data with lower latency from multiple locations close to or within the regions in the configuration.

There are trade-offs though, because in a multi-region configuration, the quorum (read-write) replicas are spread across more than one region. You might notice additional network latency when these replicas communicate with each other to form a write quorum. Reads don't require a quorum. The result is that your application achieves faster reads in more places at the cost of a small increase in write latency. For more information, see The role of replicas in writes and reads.

Available configurations

Spanner offers the following base multi-region instance configurations:

One continent

Base Configuration Name Location Read-Write Regions Read-Only Regions Witness Region Optional Region
asia1 Asia Tokyo: asia-northeast1 L,2R
Osaka: asia-northeast2 2R
None Seoul: asia-northeast3
asia2 A Asia Mumbai: asia-south1 L,2R
Delhi: asia-south2 2R
Singapore: asia-southeast1 1R
None None
eur3 Europe Belgium: europe-west1 L,2R
Netherlands: europe-west4 2R
None Finland: europe-north1
eur5 Europe London: europe-west2 L,2R
Belgium: europe-west1 2R
None Netherlands: europe-west4 Read-only: us-central1 1-OR
us-east1 1-OR
eur6 Europe Netherlands: europe-west4 L,2R
Frankfurt: europe-west3 2R
None Zurich: europe-west6 Read-only: us-east1 2-OR
nam3 North America Northern Virginia: us-east4 L,2R
South Carolina: us-east1 2R
None Iowa: us-central1 Read-only: us-west2 1-OR
nam6 North America Iowa: us-central1 L,2R
South Carolina: us-east1 2R
Oregon: us-west1 1R
Los Angeles: us-west2 1R
Oklahoma: us-central2
nam7 North America Iowa: us-central1 L,2R
Northern Virginia: us-east4 2R
None Oklahoma: us-central2 Read-only: us-east1 2-OR
us-south1 1-OR
europe-west1 2-OR
nam8 North America Los Angeles: us-west2 L,2R
Oregon: us-west1 2R
None Salt Lake City: us-west3 Read-only: asia-southeast1 2R
europe-west2 2R
nam9 North America Northern Virginia: us-east4 L,2R
Iowa: us-central1 2R
Oregon: us-west1 2R South Carolina: us-east1
nam10 North America Iowa: us-central1 L,2R
Salt Lake City: us-west3 2R
None Oklahoma: us-central2
nam11 North America Iowa: us-central1 L,2R
South Carolina: us-east1 2R
None Oklahoma: us-central2 Read-only: us-west1 1-OR
nam12 North America Iowa: us-central1 L,2R
Northern Virginia: us-east4 2R
Oregon: us-west1 2R Oklahoma: us-central2
nam13 North America Oklahoma: us-central2 L,2R
Iowa: us-central1 2R
None Salt Lake City: us-west3
nam14 North America Northern Virginia: us-east4 L,2R
Montréal: northamerica-northeast1 2R
None South Carolina: us-east1
nam15 North America Dallas: us-south1 L,2R
Northern Virginia: us-east4 2R
None Iowa: us-central1

Three continents

Base Configuration Name Locations Read-Write Regions Read-Only Regions Witness Region Optional Region
nam-eur-asia1 North America
Europe
Asia
Iowa: us-central1 L,2R
Oklahoma: us-central2 2R
Belgium: europe-west1 2R
Taiwan: asia-east1 2R
South Carolina: us-east1 Read-only: us-west2 1-OR
nam-eur-asia3 North America
Europe
Asia
Iowa: us-central1 L,2R
South Carolina: us-east1 2R
Belgium: europe-west1 1R
Netherlands: europe-west4 1R
Taiwan: asia-east1 2R
Oklahoma: us-central2
  • L: default leader region. For more information, see Modify the leader region of a database.

  • 1R: one replica in the region.

  • 2R: two replicas in the region.

  • 1-OR: one optional replica. You can create a custom regional instance configuration and add one optional read-only replica. For more information, see Create a custom instance configuration.

  • 2-OR: up to two optional replicas. You can create a custom regional instance configuration and add one or two optional read-only replicas. We recommend adding two (where possible) to help maintain low read latency. For more information, see Create a custom instance configuration.

  • A: This instance configuration is restricted with an allow-list. To get access, reach out to your Technical Account Manager.

Benefits

Multi-region instances offer these primary benefits:

  • 99.999% availability, which is greater than the 99.99% availability that Spanner regional configurations provide.

  • Data distribution: Spanner automatically replicates your data between regions with strong consistency guarantees. This allows your data to be stored where it's used, which can reduce latency and improve the user experience.

  • External consistency: Even though Spanner replicates across geographically distant locations, you can still use Spanner as if it were a database running on a single machine. Transactions are guaranteed to be serializable, and the order of transactions within the database is the same as the order in which clients observe the transactions to have been committed. External consistency is a stronger guarantee than "strong consistency," which is offered by some other products. Read more about this property in TrueTime and external consistency.

Replication

Each base multi-region configuration contains two regions that are designated as read-write regions, each of which contains two read-write replicas. One of these read-write regions is designated as the default leader region, which means that it contains your database's leader replicas. Spanner also places a witness replica in a third region called a witness region.

Each time a client issues a mutation to your database, a write quorum forms, consisting of one of the replicas from the default leader region and any two of the additional four voting replicas. (The quorum could be formed by replicas from two or three of the regions that make up your configuration, depending on which other replicas participate in the vote.) In addition to these five voting replicas, some base multi-region configurations contain read-only replicas for serving low-latency reads. The regions that contain read-only replicas are called read-only regions.

In general, the voting regions in a multi-region configuration are placed geographically close—less than a thousand miles apart—to form a low-latency quorum that enables fast writes (learn more). However, the regions are still far enough apart—typically, at least a few hundred miles—to avoid coordinated failures. In addition, if your client application is in a non-leader region, Spanner uses leader-aware routing to route read-write transactions dynamically to reduce latency in your database. For more information, see Leader-aware routing.

You can create a custom multi-region instance configuration with optional read-only replicas. Any custom read-only replicas you create cannot be included in write quorums. You can add locations listed under the Optional Region column as optional read-only replica(s). If you don't see your chosen read-only replica location, you can request a new optional read-only replica region. For more information, see Read-only replicas.

Performance best practices for multi-region configurations

For optimal performance, follow these best practices:

  • Design a schema that prevents hotspots and other performance issues.
  • For optimal write latency, place compute resources for write-heavy workloads within or close to the default leader region.
  • For optimal read performance outside of the default leader region, use staleness of at least 15 seconds.
  • To avoid single-region dependency for your workloads, place critical compute resources in at least two regions. A good option is to place them next to the two different read-write regions so that any single region outage won't impact all of your application.
  • Provision enough compute capacity to keep high priority total CPU utilization under 45% in each region.
  • For the amount of throughput per Spanner node, see performance for multi-region configurations.

Region types

Spanner has three region types: read-write regions, read-only regions, and witness regions.

Read-write regions

Each multi-region configuration contains two read-write regions, each of which contains two read-write replicas.

One of these read-write regions is designated the default leader region. A leader is selected from the replicas in the default leader region for each split. In the event of a leader replica failure, the other replica in the default leader region automatically assumes leadership. In fact, leaders run health checks on themselves and can preemptively give up leadership if they detect they are unhealthy. In most cases, when the default leader region returns to a healthy state, it automatically re-assumes the leadership.

Writes are first processed in the default leader region. You can monitor the percentage of replicas within a given region by using the instance/leader_percentage_by_region monitoring metric. For more information, see Spanner metrics.

The second read-write region contains additional replicas that serve reads and participate in voting to commit writes. These additional replicas in the second read-write region are eligible to be leaders. In the unlikely event of the loss of all replicas in the default leader region, new leader replicas are chosen from the second read-write region.

You can configure the leader region of a database by following the instructions at Change the leader region of a database. For more information, see Configure the default leader region.

Read-only regions

Read-only regions contain read-only replicas, which can serve low-latency reads to clients that are outside of the read-write regions. Read-only replicas maintain a full copy of your data, which is replicated from read-write replicas. They don't participate in voting to commit writes so they never contribute to any write latency.

Some base multi-region configurations contain read-only replicas. You can also create a custom instance configuration and add read-only replicas to your custom instance configurations to scale reads and support low latency stale reads. All read-only replicas are subject to compute capacity and database storage costs. Furthermore, adding read-only replicas to an instance configuration doesn't change the Spanner SLAs of the instance configuration. For more information, see Read-only replicas.

Witness regions

A witness region contains a witness replica, which is used to vote on writes. Witnesses become important in the rare event that the read-write regions become unavailable.

Move an instance

You can move your Spanner instance from any instance configuration to any other instance configuration, including between regional and multi-region configurations. Moving your instance does not cause downtime, and Spanner continues to provide the usual transaction guarantees, including strong consistency, during the move.

To learn more about Spanner instance move, see Move an instance.

Configure the default leader region

To change the location of your database's default leader region to be closer to connecting clients to reduce application latency, you can change the leader region for any Spanner instance that uses a multi-region configuration. For instructions on changing the location of the leader region, see Change the leader region of a database. The only regions eligible to become the default leader region for your database are the read-write regions in your multi-region configuration.

The leader region is responsible for handling all database writes, therefore if most of your traffic comes from one geographic region, you can move it to that region to reduce latency. Updating the default leader region is cheap and does not involve any data moves. The new value takes a few minutes to take effect.

Changing the default leader region is a schema change, which uses a long-running operation. If needed, you can Get the status of the long-running operation.

Trade-offs: regional versus multi-region configurations

Configuration Availability Latency Cost Data Locality
Regional 99.99% Lower write latencies within region. Lower cost; see pricing. Enables geographic data governance.
Multi-region 99.999% Lower read latencies from multiple geographic regions; a small increase in write latency. Higher cost; see pricing. Distributes data across multiple regions within the configuration.

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