Storage in the Cloud Flashcards
(30 cards)
What are the five core storage products covered in Google Cloud?
Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Spanner, Firestore, and Bigtable.
What is Cloud Storage?
A service that offers developers and IT organizations durable and highly available object storage.
What is object storage?
A computer data storage architecture that manages data as “objects” rather than file/folder hierarchies or disk chunks.
What does an “object” in object storage contain?
The binary form of the actual data, associated meta-data (like date created, author, permissions), and a globally unique identifier (URL).
Name three common use cases for Cloud Storage.
Serving website content, storing data for archival and disaster recovery, and distributing large data objects via Direct Download.
How are Cloud Storage files organized?
Into buckets.
What two main properties does a Cloud Storage bucket need?
A globally-unique name and a specific geographic location.
What does it mean that Cloud Storage objects are “immutable”?
You do not directly edit them; instead, a new version is created with every change made.
What feature allows Cloud Storage to keep a detailed history of object modifications?
Object versioning.
What are the two main ways to control access to Cloud Storage data objects?
IAM roles (for most purposes) and Access Control Lists (ACLs) for finer control.
What two pieces of information does an Access Control List (ACL) consist of?
A scope (who can access) and a permission (what actions can be performed).
What is “lifecycle management” in Cloud Storage used for?
To automatically manage objects based on policies (e.g., delete old objects, keep recent versions) to save money.
What are the four primary storage classes in Cloud Storage?
Standard Storage, Nearline Storage, Coldline Storage, and Archive Storage.
Which Cloud Storage class is best for frequently accessed, “hot” data?
Standard Storage.
Which Cloud Storage class is best for data accessed, on average, once per month or less (e.g., backups)?
Nearline Storage.
Which Cloud Storage class is meant for data accessed, at most, once every 90 days?
Coldline Storage.
Which Cloud Storage class is the lowest-cost option for data accessed less than once a year (e.g., disaster recovery)?
Archive Storage.
What common features apply across all Cloud Storage classes?
Unlimited storage, worldwide accessibility, low latency, high durability, uniform experience, and geo-redundancy (in multi-region/dual-region).
What is Autoclass in Cloud Storage?
A feature that automatically transitions objects to appropriate storage classes based on access patterns to optimize cost.
How is data encryption handled in Cloud Storage?
Data is always encrypted on the server side before being written to disk, and data in transit is encrypted using HTTPS/TLS.
What is Cloud SQL?
A fully managed relational database service supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.
What tasks does Cloud SQL handle for users?
Applying patches/updates, managing backups, and configuring replications.
What is Spanner?
A fully managed relational database service that scales horizontally, is strongly consistent, and speaks SQL.
For what type of applications is Spanner especially suited?
Applications requiring an SQL relational database with high availability, strong global consistency, and high input/output operations per second (tens of thousands of reads/writes/sec or more).
