What is Google Cloud Storage?

What is Google Deject storage?

(Image credit: Google)

Yous'll know Google Drive or Google One, merely what is Google Cloud storage? Google is well known equally a provider of some of the best deject storage products, and below, we discuss in more than detail what Google Cloud storage is, and why y'all should consider using it for your cloud storage if you lot're a larger business or enterprise.

What is Google Deject storage?

Google Cloud's logo

Google Cloud provides high-level object storage in the cloud (Paradigm credit: Google)

Google Cloud storage is a role of the Google Deject Platform, which aims to exist a competitor to Amazon S3 and Amazon Web Services (AWS) too as other large names in the market such as Microsoft. It focuses on the development and deployment of modern web applications.

Aimed at companies of all sizes, Google Cloud offers object storage with no limits on the corporeality of information stored or the size of objects. Google promises depression latency and high durability for its service, and data can be stored in locations around the world. What's more than, it can exist accessed via the command line or through a web browser.

Google Cloud storage competes with the best cloud storage for business, particularly when it comes to larger companies and enterprises.

What are Google's other deject services?

Google Drive's homepage — Google Drive is Google's most consumer-facing cloud storage service (Image credit: Google Bulldoze)

To aid explain in more detail what Google Cloud storage is and what it does, it's useful to briefly discuss Google's other cloud services to differentiate between them.

When y'all first create a personal business relationship with Google, you automatically go 15GB of storage for gratuitous. That storage can be used with Google Drive, which is purely for storage; Gmail, which is for e-mail but can as well shop attachments; or Google Photos, which is for storing, sharing, and editing photos and videos.

When y'all find that yous need more storage, that's when you upgrade to a Google Ane business relationship. At that place is a selection of iii subscriptions based on how much information you lot need to store. The starter plan comes with 100GB of storage and costs $ane.99 a calendar month (or $xix.99 a yr), increasing to 200GB at $2.99 a month, and 2TB at $ix.99 a month.

There are other benefits to paid Google One plans also, like access to Google experts and the ability to add family unit members to your plan. You even get store credit for purchases from the Google Shop with the higher two plans.

Google Workspace is similar to Google 1, except information technology is primarily for businesses and organizations that accept a lot of users. It gives you access to Google Bulldoze, Gmail, and Google Photos, but also a much larger range of Google apps that includes Calendar, Meet, Slides, and Forms.

Pricing for Google Workspace starts at $6 per user a month for 30GB of storage, and goes up to $18 per user a calendar month for 5TB. It's more than expensive than Google Ane, simply you get admission to more apps and have more than control over the permissions for each user.

Google Cloud is also aimed primarily at businesses, but as nosotros'll talk over next, it has a different purpose than Google Workspace and Google One.

Google Cloud storage: an enterprise-level product

a webpage showing some of the major brands that use Google Cloud — Google Deject is used by numerous enterprise companies such equally PayPal, Nintendo, and Spotify (Image credit: Google)

With Google Cloud storage, information can exist stored in a choice of "storage classes". Different storage classes will adapt dissimilar use cases, and you can starting time off with one and then reconfigure subsequently if you find your use cases evolving.

The storage classes are Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Annal. Standard is for what is classified every bit "hot" data which needs to exist accessed frequently, similar video streaming or images displayed on websites. Pricing for Standard starts at $0.02 per GB a month.

Nearline pricing starts at $0.01 per GB a month, and is for data that can exist stored for at least 30 days, like daily backups. Coldline is even less expensive at $0.004 per GB a calendar month, and is for data that can exist stored for 90 days, such as disaster recovery backups.

And finally, Archive is the to the lowest degree expensive at $0.0012 per GB a calendar month. It is for data that can be stored for a year, e.m., archives that need to exist kept to encounter regulatory requirements, only which are seldom accessed.

Exact pricing is based on several factors, including the corporeality of data stored, the corporeality that is read and moved between your storage "buckets," the number of operations you bear out (which tin include listing objects), and retrieval and early deletion fees.

The way pricing is calculated is quite complicated, then you'll want to visit the pricing page to evaluate information technology yourself. But here is an example: if you wanted to store a 15GB object as Standard in a multi-region for 12 hours, it would exist treated as half a 24-hour interval or 0.016666667 of a calendar month, so the formula would be $0.026 (monthly price) x 15 x 0.016666667 = $0.0065.

Google Cloud storage: Features

Google Cloud's homepage — Among Google Cloud'southward top features are multiple redundancy options, object lifecycle management, and object versioning (Image credit: Google )

Autonomously from cost-effective pricing, Google Cloud storage likewise has several features that will make it attractive to businesses. Object lifecycle direction is probably the central characteristic, because information technology can help to save you lot coin. With information technology, you tin set up weather for when information should exist deleted or when information technology tin be automatically transitioned to a less expensive storage class, for example later on it reaches a certain age.

Google Cloud also has a long list of storage bucket locations in regions effectually the world, which non only ways you can choose a location closest to your business, simply tin also ready up multiple redundancy options. This means that if one location fails, you can automatically recollect data from the next and still await response times of a fraction of a second.

When y'all first begin using a new deject information storage provider, one of the about of import considerations is how you go your data uploaded, specially if there is a lot of it built upwardly over a long menstruation of time.

Google offers two high-performance methods for transferring your data: Storage Transfer Service, and Transfer Service for on-premises data. Both offer the speed and scalability required to make the process elementary, fifty-fifty for large scale transfers.

Object versioning ways yous can store copies of objects when they are deleted or modified, and retention policies ensure data is kept for a sure amount of time earlier beingness deleted. Object holds can be placed on certain objects to prevent them from being deleted, and permissions tin exist applied at both the object and saucepan level.

Google Cloud Storage: Summary

Google Cloud storage is a provider of flexible, low-price information storage options for businesses of all sizes, merely particularly those that are employing mod web awarding models and need ways to deploy them that are both efficient and inexpensive.

It has a option of data storage classes that come across different use cases, and provides the tools necessary for your data to be automatically and seamlessly transferred between them as use cases or criteria change - and so that your business organisation is making use of the service in the nigh toll-effective way possible.