Skip to content
hands-on lab

Connecting to a Cloud SQL Database with the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy

Difficulty: Intermediate
Duration: Up to 1 hour and 15 minutes
Students: 104
Rating: 5/5
Start lab
On average, students complete this lab in45m
Get guided in a real environmentPractice with a step-by-step scenario in a real, provisioned environment.
Learn and validateUse validations to check your solutions every step of the way.
See resultsTrack your knowledge and monitor your progress.
About
Author

Description

The way developers establish database connections is an important aspect of managing a Cloud SQL database. Solid connection management practices help to minimize downtime and security risks. Developers must consider how a connection is established, which connections are authorized, and how users or other services are authenticated. This lab will cover how to establish secure connections with the Cloud SQL Auth proxy.

The Cloud SQL Auth proxy uses Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions to authorize and secure connections to Cloud SQL database instances. Like most proxy tools, it serves as the intermediary authority on connection authorizations.

In this lab, you will create a Cloud SQL database instance and learn how to securely connect to the instance using the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy and a custom IAM Service Account.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this intermediate-level lab, you will be able to:

  • Create a Cloud SQL Database instance that serves a PostgreSQL database
  • Connect to a Cloud SQL Database instance using the Cloud SQL Auth proxy

Intended Audience

  • Candidates for the Google Associate Cloud Engineer exam
  • Candidates for the Google Data Engineer exam
  • Google Cloud practitioners

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the following will be beneficial but is not required:

  • General knowledge of the Google Cloud SQL service

Updates

April 17th, 2025 - Updated the PostgreSQL and cloud-sql-proxy versions; Applied latest GCP UI screenshots

Environment before

Environment after

Covered topics

Google Cloud Platform
Databases for Google
Storage for Google
Cloud SQL
SQL for Google
SQL
Storage
Databases
Hands-on Lab UUID

Lab steps

0 of 4 steps completed.Use arrow keys to navigate between steps. Press Enter to go to a step if available.
  1. Signing In to the Google Cloud Console
  2. Creating a PostgreSQL Database using Cloud SQL
  3. Understanding the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy and Custom Service Accounts
  4. Connecting to a Cloud SQL Instance using the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy

Lab Rules