Troubleshooting Cloud SQL

This page includes tips for troubleshooting Cloud SQL issues for supported database engines. Some of these tips apply only to specific database engines, while others are common to all.

For troubleshooting tips for specific database engines, see their individual pages:

Check if your question or problem has already been addressed on one of the following pages:

Topics in this page include:

Backup and recovery

Issue Troubleshooting
You can't see the current operation's status. The Google Cloud console reports only success or failure when the operation is done. It isn't designed to show warnings or other updates.

Run the gcloud sql operations list command to list all operations for the given Cloud SQL instance.
You want to find out who issued an on-demand backup operation. The user interface doesn't show the user who started an operation.

Look in the logs and filter by text to find the user. You may need to use audit logs for private information. Relevant log files include:

  • If Cloud Audit Logs is enabled and you have the required permissions to view them, cloudaudit.googleapis.com/activity may also be available.
After an instance is deleted, you can't take a backup of the instance.

If you delete an instance without taking a final backup of the data, then no data recovery is possible. However, if you restore the instance, then Cloud SQL also restores the backups. For more information on recovering a deleted instance, see Retain backups after instance deletion.

If you have done an export operation, create a new instance and then do an import operation to recreate the database. Exports are written to Cloud Storage and imports are read from there.
An automated backup is stuck for many hours and can't be canceled. Backups can take a long time depending on the database size.

If you really need to cancel the operation, you can ask customer support to force restart the instance.
A restore operation can fail when one or more users referenced in the SQL dump file don't exist. Before restoring a SQL dump, all the database users who own objects or were granted permissions on objects in the dumped database must exist in the target database. If they don't, the restore operation fails to recreate the objects with the original ownership or permissions.

Create the database users before restoring the SQL dump.
You want to increase the number of days that you can keep automatic backups from seven to 30 days, or longer. You can configure the number of automated backups to retain. Automated backups get pruned regularly based on the retention value configured. Unfortunately, this means that the currently visible backups are the only automated backups you can restore from.

To keep backups indefinitely, you can create an on-demand backup, as they are not deleted in the same way as automated backups. On-demand backups remain indefinitely. That is, they remain until they're deleted or the instance they belong to is deleted. Because that type of backup is not deleted automatically, it can affect billing.
An automated backup failed and you didn't receive an email notification. To have Cloud SQL notify you of the backup's status, configure a log-based alert.
An instance is repeatedly failing because it is cycling between the failure and backup restore states. Attempts to connect to and use the database following restore fail.
  • There could be too many open connections. Too many connections can result from errors that occur in the middle of a connection where there are no autovacuum settings to clean up dead connections.
  • Cycling can occur if any custom code is using retry logic that doesn't stop after a few failures.
  • There could be too much traffic. Use connection pooling and other best practices for connectivity.

Things to try:

  1. Verify that the database is set up for autovacuum.
  2. Check if there is any connection retry logic set up in custom code.
  3. Turn down traffic until the database recovers and then slowly turn traffic back up.
You find you are missing data when performing a backup/restore operation. Tables were created as unlogged. For example:

CREATE UNLOGGED TABLE ....

These tables are not included in a restore from a backup:

  • The contents of unlogged tables doesn't survive failover on an HA instance.
  • Unlogged tables don't survive postgres crashes.
  • Unlogged tables are not replicated to read replicas.
  • Unlogged tables are automatically wiped during backup restore.

The solution is to avoid using unlogged tables if you want to restore those tables through a backup. If you're restoring from a database that already has unlogged tables, then you can dump the database to a file, and reload the data after modifying the dumped file to ALTER TABLE to SET LOGGED on those tables.
Unable to delete an instance when you elect to take a final backup at instance deletion. When you delete an instance, you're required to confirm whether you want to take a final backup for your instance prior to deleting it. If you enabled final backup using the final-backup instance setting, then the selection you make when you delete your instance must match the final backup instance configuration you set when you enabled final backup for your instance. To mitigate this issue, do one of the following:
  • Set the final backup value to match the instance's existing backup configuration.
  • Leave the final backup field empty when you delete your instance. If you leave the field empty, then Cloud SQL takes the final backup configuration set in instance settings to take a final backup and define its retention.
To view your instance's final backup instance configuration, see View instance information.
Unable to create a replica instance after successfully creating a primary instance with the final backup setting. If you create a new instance with the final backup instance setting enabled, then you must update the final backup organization policy to apply the backup configurations to the primary instance only. Final backups aren't supported for replica instances.
For more information, see Cloud SQL organization policies.

Clone

Issue Troubleshooting
Cloning fails with constraints/sql.restrictAuthorizedNetworks error. The cloning operation is blocked by the Authorized Networks configuration. Authorized Networks are configured for public IP addresses in the Connectivity section of the Google Cloud console, and cloning is not permitted due to security considerations.

Remove all Authorized Networks entries from the Cloud SQL instance if you can. Otherwise, create a replica without any Authorized Networks entries.
Error message: Failed to create subnetwork. Couldn't find free blocks in allocated IP ranges. Please allocate new ranges for this service provider. Help Token: [help-token-id].

You're trying to use the Google Cloud console to clone an instance with a private IP address, but you didn't specify the allocated IP range that you want to use and the source instance isn't created with the specified range. As a result, the cloned instance is created in a random range.

Use gcloud to clone the instance and provide a value for the
--allocated-ip-range-name parameter. For more information, see Cloning an instance with a private IP.

Connect

Issue Troubleshooting
Aborted connection. The issue might be:
  • Networking instability.
  • No response to TCP keep-alive commands (either the client or the server isn't responsive, possibly overloaded)
  • The database engine connection lifetime was exceeded and the server ends the connection.

Applications must tolerate network failures and follow best practices such as connection pooling and retrying. Most connection poolers catch these errors where possible. Otherwise the application must either retry or fail gracefully.

For connection retry, we recommend the following methods:

  1. Exponential backoff. Increase the time interval between each retry, exponentially.
  2. Add randomized backoff also.

Combining these methods helps reduce throttling.
Error message: Login failed for user "" You might encounter this login error during Microsoft Entra ID authentication. To resolve this issue, make sure that a SQL Server login exists for this Microsoft Entra ID user.
Network connectivity issues with private IP instances You might experience some of the following issues during integration setup:
  • Slow operations to create Microsoft Entra ID logins
  • Unable to create Microsoft Entra ID logins
  • Unable to connect to the instance using Microsoft Entra ID authentication

For more information on how to help address these issues, see Troubleshooting Microsoft Entra ID integration.
FATAL: database 'user' does not exist. gcloud sql connect --user only works with the default postgres user.

Connect with the default user, then change users.
You want to find out who is connected. Log into the database and run this command: 

SELECT datname,
usename,
application_name as appname,
client_addr,
state,
now() - backend_start