In today’s fast-evolving world where data is the new currency, it is important to manage and store data appropriately, whether you are a business professional, a student, or simply someone who values your data and privacy. Cloud storage is one solution to it and is more effective than the traditional way of storing data in heavy drives. People frequently face security risks such as data breaches, malware, and phishing attacks. To avoid these challenges google has introduced its public cloud service popularly known as Google Cloud. Google Cloud keeps the data secure by applying a wall of protection and encryption all over the data.
What is Cloud Storage?
Google Cloud Storage: Google Cloud offers a global network of data centers and a variety of cloud-based solutions to help customers with their computing, data analytics, data storage, and machine learning, and also a reliable and scalable computing environment that leverages Google’s vast global network and data centers. Google Cloud continuously evolves and integrates new technologies and services to stay competitive and meet the demands of customers. It also allows worldwide storage and retrieval of any amount of data at any time. Some more features of cloud storage are:
- Scalability
- data accessibility
- data backups and recovery
- cost-efficient and environmentally friendly
- security
Benefits of Using Cloud Storage
- Google cloud has very large ecosystem and user support.
- It is very user friendly and easy to use.
- Google cloud provide cost effective solution to store data.
- Provides security and encryption to your data and its services.
- Data backups and recovery are easily possible.
Optimization in Google Cloud
- Network efficiency-Use Google’s Network Intelligence Center to monitor and optimize network performance to ensure fast processing and data transfer .
- Cost tracking– always have a check on the pricing on different option on google cloud and only choose those plans which are best suited for your need .
- Security-It should be our first priority to have a regular check on the security .
- Have a check on google cloud platform-Be updated with google cloud platform as google launches different plans and services regularly to improve user experience.
- Data storage optimization-choose right storage class so that it full fills all your needs.
Setting up your Cloud Storage Account
Setting up your cloud storage account: before starting the practice in cloud storage it is important to make a account
- Installation
- sign up/log in
- create an account in google cloud
- Configure Security Settings
- Uploading files
Google cloud works on pay-to-use feature ,although up to a certain limit, it is free to use for all users.
Different Cloud Storage Services by Google Cloud
- Google Storage (object storage)
- Google Cloud Filestore (network file storage)
- Google Persistent (block storage)
- Google Storage for fire base
- Google Storage transfer service
Google Cloud Filestore
It is network attached storage service which provides fast and low latency file sharing options . it provides a throughput of 800 MB/s per share which will increases the file transfer speed and improve performance. Filestore can be integrated with Google kubernetes engine to provide extra storage.
Persistent Disks (Block Storage)
Persistent Disks are used for a wide range of applications, including databases, web servers and application servers. Google cloud persistent disks offers dependable and quick storage for the virtual machines instance.
- Google cloud replicates the data across multiple storage devices and locations to ensure data integrity and availability so that in case of data loss it can recover the data and prevent from heavy loss of data.
- persistent disks are very secure especially it provides permission to encrypt data with the help of Google key and customer managed key so that it can not be accessed by anyone easily.
Multiple Ways to Store Data on Google Cloud
1. Google Cloud Storage (Object Storage)
- Object storage offers us data encryption, data replication, and lifecycle management which make it more reliable and we can integrate the object storage with multiple GCP services like Google Cloud Functions, BigQuery and AI Platform, enabling you to build powerful applications.
- Everything in cloud storage is organized into buckets and objects, buckets are used to hold your data whereas images are the individual pieces of data that you store in cloud storage. cloud storage offers several ways to upload to your buckets or download objects from them using google cloud console.
Google Cloud Storage Options
1. Multi-Regional: The data which are frequently accessed by the user are stored here . The data which is stored in this storage class is very highly available and easily accessible. Some other feature of multi regional class are :
Frequent access
- Streaming video
- Website content
2. Regional: The data stored in Regional data storage are not meant to accessed on regular basis. Although you can configure access permissions for your buckets and objects using Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, Bucket ACLs and Object ACLs. This allows you to control who can access your data. Some other features are :
- Used for non access resources
- Other region can also access it
- It is cheaper than multi regional
3. Nearline: The data stored in Nearline are the data which are not accessed regularly but still needed to be readily available when there is a need of it. It is usually used in case of long term retention purpose. In short it has following features :
- Long term storage option
- Backups
4. Coldline: The coldline storage class are not used frequently and it can be very cost effective solution to store data for long time but retrieving data from Coldline storage has associated costs, and these costs are higher than those associated with Nearline and other classes.
- It is cheapest of all
- It can be used in case of disaster recovery
Best Storage Classes
|
Multi regional |
Regional |
Nearline |
Coldline |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Based on Data Access Time |
Most Frequently |
Accessed frequently |
Accessed only when needed and not very frequently |
Accessed under 90 days or after very long time |
|
Access APIs |
Consistent API |
Consistent API |
Consistent API |
Consistent API |
|
Pricing |
High pricing |
moderate pricing |
low price |
lowest of all |
|
Use case |
easily accessible data |
In region analytics transcoding |
backups |
used in case of disaster recovery |
How to Use Cloud Storage to Store Your Data?
Step 1: Creating a Bucket in Google Cloud
Select the storage class in Google Cloud Storage in which you want to store data
Control access
Step 2: Choose how to control access to objects
Create Bucket
step 3: Upload the File
2. Google Cloud SQL
It stores structured data in tables, rows and columns based on pre defined schema. they are often used for applications where the structure of the data does not change often.
Setting up Cloud SQL
The google cloud SQL can be created in google cloud console or the g cloud command line tool. you can choose database engine between
- my SQL
- Postgre SQL
- SQL server
creating a postgreSQL instance
- You can also further customize your instances storage backups and etc.
customization of instance
Cloud SQL Features and Uses
- Private IP address
- Full encryption at rest and in-transit
- Data replication
- Automated backups
- Point-in-time recovery
3. Cloud Firestore
Cloud firestore is a scalable document based no SQL database. everything in cloud firestore is organized into collection and documents. cloud firestore has a real time interface which means that users will be automatically updated in real time whenever the database changes. Other features of cloud firestore are :
- Strong consistency
- Multi-region data replication
- Client libraries for mobile front-end Java script and server-side languages
4.BigQuery
It is Google clouds enterprise data warehouse that lets you ingest store analyze and visualize big data with ease. it is designed to make large data analysis accessible to everyone.it is fast, allowing to perform complex queries in seconds. Big Query features :
- highly scalable
- extremely fast
- standard SQL dialect
5. Other storage and Database Options for very large files and data
- Spanner : cloud spanner is a fully managed relational database with unlimited scale, high availability and consistency.
- Bigtable : fully managed no SQL database for large analytical and operational workloads .
It is suitable for handling unstructured or semi-structured data and not limited to traditional tabular data. It’s commonly used for real-time analytics, time-series data, IoT data and other use cases where speed and low latency are essential
Step 1.In the Google Cloud Console, create a Bigtable instance
Step 2. Inside your Bigtable instance, create a table to store your data and define the table schema, including column families and qualifier
Step 3. Set up access control : by setting up access control you can control who has access to your Bigtable instance.
Data Security /Encryption and Backups
It is important to secure your data and have backups. By default, Google Cloud encrypts the data by using Google Managed Encryption Keys(GMEK), which are automatically rotated and managed by Google. The use of security keys as a two-factor authentication method to access Google Cloud resources adds an extra layer of security to user accounts. Google Cloud uses identify and access management(IAM) to manage access control where the user can define who can access the resources and what actions they can perform. it helps, ensure only authorized users or services access your data. If you want to keep multiple versions of your files, enable versioning for your storage bucket and also ensure that the backup is encrypted .
Troubleshooting Common Issues
The first step is to identify the problem by understanding the error message. Visit the Google Cloud status dashboard to check the status of Google Cloud services. Google provides real-time information on issues. Also have a check on Network connection .If you are facing network related issues check the network connection or refer (gcloud compute ssh). Also have a check on version you are using and keep your software updated. If you are facing some serious issues then you can also refer google cloud support services to get your issues resolved.
Best Practice in Google Cloud Storage
- Always have a backup plan so that the data can be recovered during any disaster.
- Apply resource tags to resources to improve organization, cost tracking, and management.
- Stay informed about Google Cloud services and use those service efficiently according to your needs.
Conclusion
We have discuss how Google cloud storage works and what are the service offered by the google. we have covered what are the different option to explore in Google cloud and use cloud storage to store data and covering how to make buckets to store small data and making instances in big table to store large files.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. what are the different domains for which the google cloud can be used ?
Google cloud offers different products and services like – storage services, Databases, IOT(internet of things), networking and etc .
2.How Do I Optimize Costs on Google Cloud?
Always use those storage libraries which are best suites your interest .
3.how to store very large data in google cloud storage ?
To store large number of files and data ,Google Cloud Bigtable and google cloud BigQuery can be used .
4.How can I transfer large datasets to Google Cloud Storage efficiently?
For large scale data transfer it is recommended to use tools like gsutil’s-m to upload data and transfer files and data.