What is Google Cloud Storage All About?

Whether you are getting started on your business journey or your business is well on its way to digital transformation, Google Cloud’s solutions and technologies help you solve your hardest challenges. The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) delivers information technology services by which businesses of all scales, IT professionals, and developers can leverage to work more efficiently, gain more flexibility, and/or enable a strategic advantage.

Cloud Storage allows world-wide storage and retrieval of any amount of data at any time. You can use Cloud Storage for a range of scenarios including serving website content, storing data for archival and disaster recovery, or distributing large data objects to users via direct download.

What is Google Cloud Storage?

If you’re looking for a unified cloud storage solution that’s secure and intelligent, no matter whether you’re looking to optimize costs or ensure your data pipeline remains safe and accessible, Google Cloud Storage has you covered.

This GCP service stores your objects, otherwise known as data files, on Google Cloud’s infrastructure. All of these files are stored in buckets, which are similar to a virtual filing folder and can be attached to a specific project within your organization. Your data can be categorized in the following kinds of storage classes: Standard, Nearline ,Coldline and Archive.

Your costs in Google Cloud Storage are based on your capacity usage and data egress. Your storage service can be scaled up or down, depending on your needs.

Google Cloud Storage offers four storage classes: Multi-Regional, Regional, Nearline and Coldline. All classes offer unlimited data, the same tools and APIs for data access, Open Authorization (OAuth) and granular access controls, access to other Google Cloud Storage services and a pay-per-use model.

Google Cloud Storage Multi-Regional

Google Cloud Storage Multi-Regional stores data in data centers across the globe and has 99.95% availability. It is suitable for companies that need to access data frequently, such as for website content and mobile application data. Multi-Regional class data is stored in at least two separate locations, which improves availability. It costs $0.026 per gigabyte (GB) per month, depending on location.

Google Cloud Storage Regional

Google Cloud Storage Regional stores data in one geographic location, rather than spreading it out. It offers 99.9% availability and is best for compute, analytics and machine learning workloads. When storage and compute resources are in the same region, Google Cloud Storage Regional provides high performance and availability. The practice of storing data regionally can reduce network charges. Google Cloud Storage Regional is priced at $0.02 per GB per month.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline

Google Cloud Storage Nearline is for customers who need long-term storage for data that users access less than once a month. It’s best used for archiving data, as well as backup and disaster recovery (DR), and it integrates with third-party backup products from vendors such as Unitrends and Symantec.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline offers 99% availability and has a minimum storage period of 30 days. Customers pay $0.01 per GB of storage per month, and there is a mandatory data retrieval fee of $0.01 per GB.

Google Cloud Storage Coldline

Google Cloud Storage Coldline is for customers who need to store data they access less than once a year. It is mainly for archiving and DR. It requires a 90-day minimum storage duration, and though it’s the least expensive of the three storage tiers at $0.007 per GB per month, there is a $0.05 per GB data retrieval fee. Customers can integrate Coldline with third-party backup and storage products, such as those from Veritas, Egnyte and NetApp.

Companies can store Nearline and Coldline class data in buckets created in regional and multiregional locations.

GCP Features

Reliable and secure object storage

Transition to lower-cost classes easily configure your data with Object Lifecycle Management (OLM) to automatically transition to lower-cost storage classes when it meets the criteria you specify, such as when it reaches a certain age or when you’ve stored a newer version of the data.

Multiple redundancy options Cloud Storage has an ever-growing list of storage bucket locations where you can store your data with multiple automatic redundancy options.

Easily transfer data to Cloud Storage Transfer Service and Transfer Service for on-premises data offer two highly performant, online pathways to Cloud Storage—both with the scalability and speed you need to simplify the data transfer process.

Storage classes for any workload save costs without sacrificing performance by storing data across different storage classes. You can start with a class that matches your current use, then reconfigure for cost savings.

Locuz and GCP

With Locuz you not only get Google Cloud expertise but as trusted Google cloud partners you gain to understand Google Cloud solutions to complex business challenges with Locuz helping you out every step.

Our expert team can help you learn proven strategies and detailed techniques for compute, storage, network, and data analytics, and tactics to manage and optimize costs. You’ll also get real-world examples of enterprises that have achieved operational efficiency.

Our IT Infra assessment quickly scans the entire inventory of your virtual and physical server resources and provides you with a quick glance of how you can improve your efficiency at the same time giving you tips on how you can save up on your IT costs using Google Cloud Platform.

There are many financial benefits of moving to the cloud. Download our whitepaper to explore five ways you can implement and achieve cost optimization for your cloud.

You’ll learn proven strategies and detailed techniques for compute, storage, network, and data analytics, and tactics to manage and optimize costs. You’ll also get real-world examples of enterprises that have achieved operational efficiency.