Diagnosing Issues with Cloud SQL Instances

MySQL   |  PostgreSQL

This page contains a list of the most frequent issues you might run into when working with Cloud SQL instances as well as steps you can take to address them. You should also review the Known Issues page. If the information here does not solve your issue, see the Support Overview for getting further help.

Viewing logs

To see information about recent operations, you can view the Cloud SQL instance operation logs or the PostgreSQL error logs.

Connection issues

Verify that your application is closing connections properly

If you see errors containing "Aborted connection nnnn to db:", it usually indicates that your application is not terminating connections properly. It could also be caused by network issues. This error does not mean that there are problems with your Cloud SQL instance.

For examples of best practices for connection management, see Managing connections.

Verify that your certificates have not expired

If your instance is configured to use SSL, go to the Cloud SQL Instances page in the GCP Console and open the instance. Open its Connections page and make sure that your server certificate is valid. If it has expired, you must add a new certificate and rotate to it. Learn more.

Verify that you are authorized to connect

If your connections are failing, check that you are authorized to connect:

• If you are having trouble connecting using an IP address, for example, you are connecting from your on-premises environment with the psql client, then make sure that the IP address you are connecting from is authorized to connect to the Cloud SQL instance. Here's your current IP address.
• Try the gcloud sql connect to connect to your instance. This command authorizes your IP address for a short period of time. You can run this in an environment with Cloud SDK and psql client installed. You can also run this command in Cloud Shell, which is available in the Google Cloud Platform Console and has Cloud SDK and the psql client pre-installed. Cloud Shell provides a Compute Engine instance that you can use to connect to Cloud SQL.
• Temporarily allow all IP addresses to connect to an instance by authorizing 0.0.0.0/0. This confirms that your client can connect.
  Note: Authorizing all IP addresses opens your database to any client that tries to connect. If you have sensitive or proprietary data in your database, you should not use this method to investigate connectivity issues.

Determining how connections are being initiated

You can see information about your current connections by running the following command:

SELECT * from pg_stat_activity ;

Connections that show an IP address, such as 1.2.3.4, are connecting using IP. Connections with cloudsqlproxy~1.2.3.4 are using the Cloud SQL Proxy, or else they originated from App Engine. Connections from localhost are usually to a First Generation instance from App Engine, although that path is also used by some internal Cloud SQL processes.

Understand connection limits

There are no QPS limits for Cloud SQL instances. However, there are connection, size, and App Engine specific limits in place. See Quotas and Limits.

Database connections consume resources on the server and the connecting application. Always use good connection management practices to minimize your application's footprint and reduce the likelihood of exceeding Cloud SQL connection limits. For more information, see Managing database connections.

Show connections and threads

To see the processes that are running on your database, use the pg_stat_activity table:

select * from pg_stat_activity;

Connections from Compute Engine

If you expect that connections between your Compute Engine instance and your Cloud SQL instance will include long-lived unused connections, then you should be aware that connections with a Compute Engine instance time out after 10 minutes of inactivity. For more information, see Networking and Firewalls in the Compute Engine documentation.

To keep long-lived unused connections alive, you can set the TCP keepalive. The following commands set the TCP keepalive value to one minute and make the configuration permanent across instance reboots.

# Display the current tcp_keepalive_time value.
cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keepalive_time

# Set tcp_keepalive_time to 60 seconds and make it permanent across reboots.
echo 'net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time = 60' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

# Apply the change.
sudo /sbin/sysctl --load=/etc/sysctl.conf

# Display the tcp_keepalive_time value to verify the change was applied.
cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keepalive_time

Instance issues

Disk space

If your instance reaches the maximum storage amount allowed, writes to the database fail. If you delete data, for example, by dropping a table, the space is usually freed, but it is not reflected in the reported Storage Used of the instance. You can run the VACUUM FULL command to recover unused space; note that write operations are blocked while the vacuum command is running. Learn more.

Suspended state

There are a number of reasons why Cloud SQL may suspend an instance, including:

• Billing issues

  For example, if the credit card for the project's billing account has expired, the instance may be suspended. You can check the billing information for a project by going to the Google Cloud Platform Console billing page, selecting the project, and viewing the billing account information used for the project. After you resolve the billing issue, the instance should return to runnable status within a few hours.

• Legal issues

  For example, a violation of the GCP Acceptable Use Policy may cause the instance to be suspended. For more information, see "Suspensions and Removals" in the GCP Terms of Service.

• Operational issues

  For example, if an instance is stuck in a crash loop, i.e., it crashes while starting or just after starting, Cloud SQL may suspend it.

While an instance is suspended, you can continue to view information about it or you can delete it, if the suspension was triggered by billing issues.

Cloud SQL users with Platinum, Gold, or Silver support packages can contact our support team directly about suspended instances. All users can use the guidance above along with the google-cloud-sql forum.

Performance

Keep a reasonable number of database schemas and tables

Database schemas and tables consume system resources. A very large number can affect instance performance.

General performance tips

Make sure that your instance is not constrained on memory or CPU. For performance-intensive workloads, your instance should have at least 60 GB of memory.

For slow database inserts, updates, or deletes, check the locations of the writer and database; sending data a long distance introduces latency.

For slow database selects, consider the following:

• Caching is extremely important for read performance. Check the various blks_hit / (blks_hit + blks_read) ratios from the PostgreSQL Statistics Collector. Ideally, the ratio should be above 99%. If this is not the case, consider increasing the size of your instance's RAM.
• If your workload consists of CPU intensive queries (sorting, regexes, other complex functions), your instance might be throttled; add vCPUs.
• Check the location of the reader and database - latency will affect read performance even more than write performance.
• Investigate non-Cloud SQL specific performance improvements, such as adding appropriate indexing, reducing data scanned, and avoiding extra round trips.

If you observe poor performance executing queries, use EXPLAIN to identify where to add indexes to tables to improve query performance. For example, make sure every field that you use as a JOIN key has an index on both tables.