Cloud Storage

Question 1

What is cloud storage?

Answer 1

a unified object storage system

Question 2

Key points of cloud storage? (7)

Answer 2

1. manages objects in terms of blobs
2. objects are atomic
3. objects are grouped into buckets that are individually addressable by URL
4. serverless
5. not limited by size of disks attached to server
6. access can be controlled at object level
7. does not support concurrency

Question 3

What is Cloud Storage suited for?

Answer 3

storing large volumes of data that don’t require a consistent data structure

Question 4

Cloud Storage Bucket key points? (5)

Answer 4

1. buckets share a global namespace, so they must be globally unique
2. buckets are like directories - used to help organize objects into groups, but they do not have sub-directories
3. when you create a bucket, you specify the location - objects may be stored in different regions for high availability
4. 4 different storage classes
5. buckets can be configured to retain versions
   - latest version is live version
   - when live version is deleted, it is archived instead
6. provides lifecycle management policies

Question 5

What is Cloud Storage Fuse?

Answer 5

a way to mount a bucket as a file system on linux and mac - allows upload and download of files to/from buckets using system commands

Question 6

What are the 4 different storage classes for Cloud Storage?

Answer 6

1. Multi-regional
2. Regional
3. Nearline
4. Coldline

Question 7

What is multi-regional storage, and what are its key points?

Answer 7

1. data is replicated across multiple regions for high availability
2. redundancy in the case of zone failures
3. may reduce latency if users are spread out
4. higher cost (~1.25x regional)
5. it’s for frequently used data

Question 8

What is regional storage, and what are its key points?

Answer 8

1. for frequently used data

2. storage is in one region

Question 9

What is nearline storage, and what are its key points?

Answer 9

1. infrequently used data (< 1 per month)
2. lower SLA
3. lower cost (~ half regional)
4. retrieval charge per GB retrieved
5. minimum 30 day storage duration

Question 10

What is coldline storage, and what are its key points?

Answer 10

1. very infrequently used data (< 1 per year)
2. lower SLA
3. lowest cost (~ 1/3 regional)
4. higher retrieval cost per GB (about 5x nearline)
5. minimum 90 day storage duration

Question 11

What are the lifecycle managment policies?

Answer 11

You can configure objects to be moved based on different criteria, like time

1. move objects to lower cost storage class
2. delete objects based on age, creation date, live state or current storage class
3. can set up lifecycle policy after bucket creation

Question 12

How to change the storage class via shell?

Answer 12

gsutil rewrite -s [STORAGE CLASS] gs://[PATH TO OBJECT}

Question 13

How to make a bucket via shell?

Answer 13

gsutil mb gs://[BUCKET NAME]

Question 14

How to copy Cloud Storage object via shell?

Answer 14

gsutil cp [LOCAL OBJECT} gs://[DESTINATION BUCKET]

Question 15

How to download Cloud Storage object?

Answer 15

gsutil cp gs://[SOURCE BUCKET]/[SOURCE OBJECT] [DESTINATION DIR}

Question 16

How to move Cloud Storage object?

Answer 16

gsutil mv gs://[SOURCE BUCKET]/[SOURCE OBJECT] gs://[DEST BUCKET]/[DEST OBJECT]