Google Cloud Storage Nearline

Google Cloud Storage Nearline is a public cloud storage service from Google intended for data archiving, backup and disaster recovery.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline is one of four cloud storage classes offered in the Google Cloud Storage platform. The other three classes are Google Cloud Multi-Regional Storage, Google Cloud Regional Storage and Google Cloud Storage Coldline.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline offers slightly lower availability at 99% and higher latency than Google Cloud Multi-Regional Storage and Google Cloud Regional Storage. According to Google, it has sub-second data access speeds with a minimum storage period of 30 days. Google Cloud Storage Nearline is best suited for storing data that users access no more than once a month. This type of storage is known as cold storage.

Despite their differences, Google Cloud Storage Nearline shares some features with the other storage classes, such as unlimited storage; OAuth, access controls and encryption for data security; and redundancy. In addition, Google Cloud Storage Nearline shares the same infrastructure as other services within the Google Cloud Platform, which allows it to integrate with other Google cloud services, such as Google Compute Engine and Google App Engine.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline users can access and retrieve stored data through Google APIs and the Google Cloud Platform Console.

Users can also integrate Google Cloud Storage Nearline with third-party backup and storage products, including those from Unitrends, Actifio, Pixit Media and Symantec.

Pricing for Google Cloud Storage Nearline is based on a pay-per-usage model. As of this writing, users pay $0.01 per GB of storage per month.  Additionally, there is a mandatory data retrieval fee of $0.01 per GB. By comparison, Google charges $0.007 per GB per month for the Google Cloud Storage Coldline, which has a retrieval fee of $0.05 per GB; $0.02 per GB per month for the Google Cloud Regional Storage; and $0.026 per GB per month for Google Cloud Multi-Regional Storage.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline is used primarily by cloud administrators, archive managers, compliance officers and any other IT professional with a need for long-term data storage that is not regularly accessed by enterprise applications.