Cloud Storage

In this lesson, we will learn about Cloud Storage. This is one of the widely used storage services of GCP.

Introduction

Cloud storage is non-structured data storage. If your data is structured then you should look for other storage options. Cloud storage is object-based or blob-based storage. Meaning everything stored in it is considered as an object. It is a highly available and durable storage option.

Properties

Cloud storage has something called a “Bucket” to store the objects in it. Keep these points in mind while working with Cloud Storage.

• A bucket is flat storage. This means there are no folders or subfolders. However, GCP imitates folders using / in the object name.

• The bucket name should be a universally unique name.

• The object is immutable. So, there is no update, truncate, or append for an object. However, you can override it.

• Every object has some metadata stored about it. Metadata is key-value pair having some information about the object.

Storage classes

Storage classes are kind of categories based on the object access frequency. For example, there are 2 files in the buckets and one is accessed frequently and the other is being accessed only once per month then paying the same price for both the files is not convenient.

So, to cut down on cost we can apply the Nearline storage class to the second file which will change the billing of that file.

Behind the scenes, the file is then stored on some non-expensive storage which stores infrequently accessed data.

Available storage classes are:

1. Multi-regional - Part of Standard now
2. Regional - Part of Standard now
3. Nearline
4. Coldline
5. Archive