How to reduce "Storage PD SSD for DB in Americas" cost?

[Ben Gorman]

I have a pretty simple MySQL (2nd gen) instance.  I recently upgraded the machine type from db-n1-standard-1 to db-n1-standard-2 and I increased a bunch of the storage not realizing the cost implications of doing this.  My forecasted bill for October is now over $300 while it was < $100 for the previous month!  The bulk of this seems to be from "Storage PD SSD for DB in Americas" where usage is listed as "440.32 gibibyte month".  The problem seems to be that "Once you save an increase to your storage capacity, you cannot decrease it later."  However, my instance is using 1050GB storage capacity even though my database is < 20GB.  How do I resolve this issue? I.e. how do I reduce the amount of storage I'm paying for since I'm barely using any of it?

[George (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hello Ben, 

You are right, storage volume once increased, you cannot decrease it. Usually, this happens with increased usage, when you have automatic storage increases enabled. Once a higher volume used, it is also likely it is going to be used again, so decreasing allocated storage in not likely to result in final savings. 

It is in fact possible to reduce disc volume upon request; this is a one-time lengthy operation that attracts downtime, so your instance is expected to be off-line for a while. 

If you would like to have your disc volume reduced, you are encouraged to either use your support package to contact Cloud Support, or open an issue with similar contents in the Public Issue Tracker. 

This discussion group is oriented more towards general opinions, trends and issues of general nature touching App Engine and Cloud SQL. For coding and programming architecture, database administration, etc., you may be better served in dedicated forums such as stackoverflow, where experienced programmers are within reach and ready to help. 

[Daniel Joyce]

Backup current instance, create new instance, restore to new instance, point servers to new instance, decommission old instance?

[Ben Gorman]

Thanks George.  A number of people said I'd need to create a new instance, but your solution was the best one IMO since a few hours of downtime wasn't a big problem for me.  I contacted Google Cloud Support and they handled it for me. Thanks again!