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    Cloud Storage overview

    This page describes Cloud Storage and how it works.

    How Cloud Storage works

    Cloud Storage is a scalable and managed storage service offered by Google Cloud that lets you store data as objects in containers called buckets .

    All buckets are associated with a project , and you group your projects under an organization . After you create a project, you can create buckets , upload objects to your buckets, and download objects from your buckets. You can also grant permissions to make your data accessible to principals you specify or accessible to everyone on the public internet . Directory capabilities let you utilize Cloud Storage more similarly to a hard drive or Network Attached Storage (NAS): folders let you organize objects in a directory structure, and managed folders let you simplify access control to your objects.

    Each project, bucket, object, folder, and managed folder is a resource in Google Cloud, as are things such as Compute Engine instances .

    The Google Cloud hierarchy

    Here's how the Cloud Storage structure can apply to a real-world case:

    • Organization : Your company, called Example Inc., creates a Google Cloud organization called exampleinc.org .

    • Project : Example Inc. is building several applications, and each one is associated with a project. Each project has its own set of Cloud Storage APIs, as well as other resources.

    • Bucket : Each project can contain multiple buckets, which are containers to store your objects. For example, you might create a photos bucket for all the image files your app generates and a separate videos bucket. Cloud Storage offers different storage classes and locations for your buckets, letting you choose the durability and availability of your data to suit the needs of your workloads.

      Buckets serve as a primary data foundation in the broader Google Cloud ecosystem. You can connect your buckets as storage backends for other Google Cloud services, such as AI Hypercomputer, Vertex AI, and Google Kubernetes Engine.

      While buckets are suitable for most data storage use cases, you can set up optional configurations and features on a bucket to make it more suitable for high-performance workloads specifically:

      • Hierarchical namespace : Buckets can have hierarchical namespace enabled, which lets you store your data in a logical file system structure by using folders. Storing your data in folders provides the ability to use directory semantics and atomic folder operations, which are often required to accelerate data-intensive AI/ML and analytics workloads. Buckets with hierarchical namespace enabled offer up to 8 times higher initial queries per second (QPS) limits for reading and writing objects compared to buckets without hierarchical namespace enabled.

        Hierarchical namespace can only be enabled at the time of bucket creation and can't be enabled on an existing bucket.

      • Rapid Bucket : Rapid Bucket is a high performance capability that lets you store objects in the Rapid storage class by using a zone as a bucket's location. When you locate buckets in zones, you get the ability to colocate your objects with your compute resources, automatic enablement of hierarchical namespace, and new APIs for streaming reads and appendable writes. Rapid Bucket provides substantially improved latency, throughput, and I/Os compared to buckets in other storage classes, making the capability ideal for data-intensive AI/ML and analytics workloads.

        To use Rapid Bucket, you create a bucket and define a zone as the bucket's location . Rapid Bucket can't be used on existing buckets that aren't located in a zone.

    • Object : Buckets contain objects, such as an image called puppy.png . An object is an immutable piece of data consisting of a file of any format. Each bucket can contain essentially unlimited individual objects.

    • Folder : Buckets with hierarchical namespace enabled can contain folders. Folders enable a real file system for storing objects, as opposed to a simulated file system. You can atomically rename a folder and all the objects within it in one operation.

    • Managed folder : Each bucket can also contain managed folders, which grant or revoke additional access beyond the IAM permissions set on the bucket. Managed folders don't use a true directory tree structure; rather, a managed folder is a resource overlay used only for permission checking.

    Tools for Cloud Storage

    You can interact with Cloud Storage by using the following tools:

    • Google Cloud console : The Google Cloud console provides a visual interface for you to manage your data in a browser.

    • Google Cloud CLI : The gcloud CLI lets you interact with Cloud Storage through a terminal using gcloud storage commands .

    • Client libraries : The Cloud Storage client libraries allow you to manage your data using one of your preferred languages, including C++, C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

    • REST APIs: Manage your data using the JSON or XML API.

    • Terraform : Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tool that you can use to provision the infrastructure for Cloud Storage. For more information, see Provision resources with Cloud Storage .

    • gRPC : gRPC lets you interact with Cloud Storage. gRPC is a high performance, open source universal RPC framework developed by Google that you can use to define your services using Protocol Buffers.

    • Cloud Storage FUSE : Cloud Storage FUSE lets you mount Cloud Storage buckets to your local file system. This enables your applications to read from a bucket or write to a bucket by using standard file system semantics.

    Securing your data

    Once you upload your objects to Cloud Storage, you have fine-grained control over how you secure and share your data. Here are some ways to secure the data you upload to Cloud Storage:

    • Identity and Access Management : Use IAM to control who has access to the resources in your Google Cloud project. Resources include Cloud Storage buckets and objects, as well as other Google Cloud entities such as Compute Engine instances . You can grant principals certain types of access to buckets and objects, such as update , create , or delete .

    • Data encryption : Cloud Storage uses server-side encryption to encrypt your data by default. You can also use supplemental data encryption options such as customer-managed encryption keys and customer-supplied encryption keys .

    • Authentication : Ensure that anyone who accesses your data has proper credentials.

    • Soft delete : Prevent permanent loss of data against accidental or malicious deletion by retaining recently deleted objects and buckets. By default, Cloud Storage enables soft delete for all buckets with a seven day retention period.

    • Object Versioning : When a live version of an object is replaced or deleted, it can be retained as a noncurrent version if you enable Object Versioning.

    • Bucket IP filtering : With bucket IP filtering, you can restrict access to a bucket based on the source IP address of the request and secure your data from unauthorized access from specific IP addresses or Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

    • Bucket Lock : Govern how long objects in buckets must be retained by specifying a retention policy.

    Resource names

    Each resource has a unique name that identifies it, much like a filename. Buckets have a resource name in the form of projects/_/buckets/ BUCKET_NAME , where BUCKET_NAME is the ID of the bucket. Objects have a resource name in the form of projects/_/buckets/ BUCKET_NAME /objects/ OBJECT_NAME , where OBJECT_NAME is the ID of the object.

    A # NUMBER appended to the end of the resource name indicates a specific generation of the object. #0 is a special identifier for the most recent version of an object. #0 is useful to add when the name of the object ends in a string that would otherwise be interpreted as a generation number.

    Quickstart guides

    To learn the fundamentals of using Cloud Storage, visit the following guides:

    Looking for other products?

    If Cloud Storage is not the right storage solution for you, see more information about the following storage services:

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