title: How can I ingest data from a Microsoft SQL Server into Google Cloud Platform?
body: <p>I've been reading the GCP documentation trying to find a way to ingest data from a Microsoft SQL Server database passively (like using Cloud SQL). The problem is that Cloud SQL keeps idle most of the time (data is updated once a week) and I could not figure out how to start/stop the instance using Cloud Functions or Scheduler. In addition to that, I also need to automate the data pipeline sending data do Dataprep, which is not possible using Cloud SQL (sql server instance). </p>
  
  <p>To sum up, I need to ingest data -> clean/enrich it -> make it available for analysis</p>
  
  <p>*I would like to avoid using external paid APIs</p>
  
  <p>These are the sources I've read:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://cloud.google.com/scheduler/docs/start-and-stop-compute-engine-instances-on-a-schedule#application_architecture" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cloud Scheduler - how to schedule start/stop</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://developers.google.com/resources/api-libraries/documentation/sqladmin/v1beta4/python/latest/sqladmin_v1beta4.instances.html#update" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cloud SQL Admin API</a>
  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/61100899/schedule-start-stop-on-gcp-sql-instance">Stack Overflow - schedule-start-stop-on-gcp-sql-instance</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/69109113" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Issue tracker gcp - start/stop cloud sql</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/json_api/v1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Cloud Storage - upload objects API docs</a></p>
  
  <p>These is a brief image of the cloud architecture:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ff5G4.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ff5G4.png" alt="Brief architecture introduction"></a></p>