I'm much more likely to use Spanner than I am to operate my own installation of something like CockroachDB. To operate a database: 1. I need to provision N nod

I'm much more likely to use Spanner than I am to operate my own installation of something like CockroachDB. To operate a database: 1. I need to provision N nodes across regions and availability zones 2. I need to patch those nodes 3. I need to back those nodes up 4. I need to build automated systems to rotate those nodes if they become unhealthy 5. I need to build automated systems to restore my entire database from backups in event of disaster With Spanner, I don't have to do any of that, really. Maybe a bit of fiddling with replicas or something.