What is Google Cloud Nearline storage?
Google Cloud Nearline storage is a public cloud storage class intended for storing infrequently accessed data. It is best suited for storing data that users access no more than once a month. This type of storage is known as cold storage.
The Nearline storage class requires a 30-day minimum storage duration. It provides slightly lower availability than other storage classes, with only 99.95% in multi- and dual-regions, as well as 99.9% in regions.
Nearline is one of four cloud storage classes within the Google Cloud Storage platform. The other three classes are as follows:
- Google Cloud Standard storage. For frequently accessed data, also known as hot data.
- Google Cloud Coldline storage. For infrequently accessed data and a 90-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.
Nearline storage pricing is based on a pay-per-usage model, and as of this writing, it starts at $0.010 per GB, per month in the us-central1 location -- price varies by region. Additionally, there is a data retrieval fee of $0.01 per GB when the organization reads, copies, moves or rewrites object data or metadata.
The Nearline storage class is used primarily by cloud administrators, archive managers, compliance officers and any other IT professional who needs to store data that's infrequently accessed by enterprise applications and users.
Nearline storage shares the same infrastructure as other services within Google Cloud, which enables it to integrate with services such as Google Compute Engine and Google App Engine.
