What is Google Cloud Coldline storage?
Google Cloud Coldline storage is a public cloud cold storage class for infrequently accessed data. It is specifically designed to store data that organizations access once a quarter.
The Coldline storage class requires a 90-day minimum storage duration. It provides slightly lower monthly availability than the standard storage class, with only 99.95% in multi- and dual-regions, as well as 99.9% in regions.
Coldline is one of four cloud storage classes within the Google Cloud Storage platform. The other three classes are the following:
- Google Cloud Standard storage. For frequently accessed data, also known as hot data.
- Google Cloud Nearline storage. For infrequently accessed data and a 30-day minimum storage duration.
- Google Cloud Archive storage. For data archiving, online backup and disaster recovery with a 365-day minimum storage duration.
All storage classes include features such as the following:
- Unlimited storage with no minimum object size.
- Worldwide accessibility and storage locations.
- Low latency with no offline data retrieval.
- 99.999999999% annual durability.
- Cross-region redundancy.
Coldline storage pricing is based on a pay-per-usage model, and as of this writing, it starts at $0.004 per GB per month in the us-central1 location -- price varies by region. Additionally, a data retrieval fee of $0.02 per GB is applied when the organization reads, copies, moves or rewrites object data or metadata.
The Coldline storage class is used primarily by cloud administrators, archive managers, compliance officers and any other IT professional that needs to store data that's infrequently accessed by enterprise applications and users.
In addition, the Coldline storage class is able to integrate with other services within Google Cloud, such as Google Compute Engine and Google App Engine.
