Google Cloud Storage (or GCC) is object storage for the cloud. It lets you store data of any size in the form of objects. An object is a file that can be in any format. It uses containers or buckets to store objects. Further, each bucket links with a project.
Table of Contents
Key concepts
Project
GCC stores all the data in a project. You can create one or more projects depending on your scenario. A project contains users, APIs, billing information, authentications, settings, and others.
Bucket or Container
A bucket is a container that stores your data in the form of objects. Cloud Storage stores everything in the bucket.
The key points about the buckets are:
- Creating a bucket inside another bucket is not allowed.
- Buckets give you access control to your data. They also give you the ability to organize your data.
- The application you design should have a small number of bucket operations. And it should have a large number of object operations. Because you cannot create or delete an unlimited number of buckets.
- While creating a bucket, you give a unique name to the bucket. Moreover, it also lets you decide the location and storage class for the bucket.
- Each bucket can be part of one storage namespace.
Object
In Google Cloud Storage, you store your data in the form of objects. An object data is a file you store in cloud storage. An object consists of two parts, object data, and metadata. Object metadata consists of name-value pairs.
The key points about the objects are:
- You can create an unlimited number of objects in a bucket.
- Object name consists of any Unicode characters. It should be unique within a bucket, and its length should be less than 1024 bytes.
- Any object you upload cannot change as long as it is available in the cloud storage. So, anything you want to change about an object should be before the upload.
- Enable object versioning to store different versions of the same object with variations. You can identify each version by a generation number.
Resource
A project, bucket, or object is an example of a resource in Google Cloud Storage. All resources have unique names.
Geo-redundancy
Any data you store in GCC is redundant. It means the same data is available in different geographic locations. Geo-redundancy recovers your data if it corrupts at one location. Therefore, it results in the highest availability.
Network usage
Any data you send or receive from Google Cloud Storage acts for network usage. The data you read from a bucket is what we call the Egress. Egress presents data in the form of HTTP responses. Any data you write to a bucket is an example of Ingress. Ingress presents data as HTTP requests.
Why use Google Cloud Storage?
Here are some reasons why you should use Google Cloud Storage:
- It is ideal to use if you want to store unstructured data such as audio, video, logs. Unstructured data is the type of data that is not in tabular form.
- You can use it to backup and archive your data.
- Integration of Google Cloud Storage with other Google Cloud services is straightforward.
- There are four types of storage classes you can choose from. These are Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive Storage. You can select the one that best fits your needs.
- High durability is also one of the features of Google Cloud Storage. It gives 99.999999999% durability of objects.
- Depending on your requirements, you can also select a region that best fits your needs. There are many regions you can choose from.
- By clicking on the console tab in documentation, you can try free SDKs.
Frequently asked questions
What tools/libraries can we use to manage to Google Cloud Storage?
There are many tools or libraries available. Google Cloud Console, which you can use through your browser. You can also use a command-line tool named gsutil. Moreover, you can use any client library depending on the programming language.
Where does GCC store our data?
It depends on the bucket location in which you have stored the data.
Can we recover data from accidental deletion?
Yes. Google Cloud Storage offers many ways to protect your data from accidental deletion.
Can we sell the libraries we develop for Google Cloud Storage?
Yes, you can sell the libraries or tools you develop.
Can we create a bucket without specifying the bucket location?
Yes. In that case, the location for the bucket will be the United States. This is because it will store your bucket and data somewhere in the United States.
Can we upload files to Google Drive using Google Cloud Storage?
No. You cannot upload files to Google Drive as there is no integration with Google Drive.
Can we store unstructured data in Google Cloud Storage?
Yes. You can use a cloud service such as Google Drive for this purpose.
Related Object Storage Services
There are many related object storage services that you need to know. Every organization, small or large, needs to store data. Finding the right cloud storage provider to meet your needs is essential.
Below is a full-list of the related object storage services covered by Anto Online:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3)
- DigitalOcean Spaces Object Storage
- Google Cloud Storage
- Linode Object Storage
- Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
- Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage
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