I have a doubt about Google Cloud Platform...
I did an ASP.NET deployment via Google Cloud which created a VM instance.
When I connect to the VM via RDP I notice that the VM has SQL server installed.
Can I use that SQL server for my hosted website on the same VM or do I need to order a separate SQL database via Google Cloud SQL?
Some explanation on why I can or can't use the SQL server on my VM would be very helpful as so far I did not succeed to find back anything about this in the documentation. And what are the pros & cons if it can be used compared to Cloud SQL?
Yes you can use a local database on a GCE VM.
But this becomes essentially having an on-prem database.
So really your question is on-prem vs Cloud database which there are endless blogs and information on the web about. This article does a good job explaining the pros and cons.
Pros for Cloud SQL is that it is a managed service and has automatic backups, maintenance, scaling, IAM database authentication etc.
While if you used a local database on a GCE VM you would be in charge of maintaining it and scaling it properly, a lot more work falls on you to make sure things run smoothly.