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Remediation

Before taking any action, confirm that the instance is no longer required for production, development, or periodic workloads.

Verify the Instance is Unused​

  • Confirm with application owners and relevant teams that the SQL instance is no longer needed.
  • Check for periodic jobs to ensure the instance is not used for infrequent tasks such as monthly or quarterly reporting.
  • Review dependent services to verify that no applications or services still have connection strings pointing to this instance.

From Google Cloud CLI​

Stopping an instance preserves data and configuration while stopping billing for vCPU and memory.

gcloud sql instances patch {{instance-name}} \
    --activation-policy=NEVER \
    --region={{region}}

Delete the Instance (Permanent)​

If the instance is confirmed to be unnecessary, deleting it stops all associated costs. This action is irreversible.

From Google Cloud CLI​

gcloud sql backups create \
    --instance={{instance-name}} \
    --description={{description}}

Delete the Instance​

From Google Cloud CLI​

gcloud sql instances delete {{instance-name}} \
    --async \
    --enable-final-backup \
    --final-backup-description={{description}} \
    --final-backup-retention-days={{final-backup-retention-days}}

Resize the Instance​

From Google Cloud CLI​

If the instance is not completely idle but underutilized, consider resizing to a smaller machine type to reduce costs:

gcloud sql instances patch {{instance-name}} \
    --cpu={{new-cpu}} \
    --memory={{new-memory}} \
    [--tier={{new-machine-type}}] \
    --region={{region}}

Considerations​

  • Resizing may trigger a restart. Schedule changes during a maintenance window to minimize impact on availability.
  • The --cpu and --memory flags are not compatible with the Enterprise Plus edition. For Enterprise Plus instances, the machine configuration is determined solely by the --tier flag and these flags should not be used.