title: How to reduce Google Cloud SQL instance size?
body: <p>I have a Google Cloud SQL MySQL 2nd Gen 5.7 instance with 70GB of unused storage. I want to reduce the unused storage of my instance as this is one of the major hosting costs.</p>
  
  <p>The only way that I'm seeing as a possibility is dumping all the database to a new Google Cloud SQL instance created with the right storage capacity. However this approach has several pitfalls:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>It would require a lot of time to dump and load the database (this would require severe downtime in the websites that are using the db)</li>
  <li>I would have to change all the websites that use that database because the database's IP would change</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What alternatives do I have?</p>