Choosing the right storage product

1. Choosing the right storage product

So, you’ve learned about the different storage options that Google Cloud offers, but in what scenarios should you use each one? Ultimately, it’s a combination of the data type that needs to be stored and the business need. If data is unstructured, then Cloud Storage is the most appropriate option. You have to decide a storage class: Standard, Nearline, Coldline, or Archive. Or whether to let the Autoclass feature decide that for you. If data is structured or semi-structured, choosing a storage product will depend on whether workloads are transactional or analytical. Transactional workloads stem from online transaction processing, or OLTP, systems, which are used when fast data inserts and updates are required to build row-based records. An example of this is point-of-sale transaction records. Then there are analytical workloads, which stem from online analytical processing, or OLAP systems, which are used when entire datasets need to be read. They often require complex queries, for example, aggregations. An example here would be analyzing sales history to see trends and aggregated views. After you determine if the workloads are transactional or analytical, you must determine whether the data will be accessed by using SQL. So, if your data is transactional and you need to access it by using SQL, then Cloud SQL and Spanner are two options. Cloud SQL works best for local to regional scalability, and Spanner is best to scale a database globally. If the transactional data will be accessed without SQL, Firestore might be the best option. Firestore is a transactional NoSQL, document-oriented database. If you have analytical workloads that require SQL commands, BigQuery might be the best option. BigQuery, Google’s data warehouse solution, lets you analyze petabyte-scale datasets. Alternatively, Bigtable provides a scalable NoSQL solution for analytical workloads. It’s best for real-time, high-throughput applications that require only millisecond latency.

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