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This page provides an overview of Cloud Storage and how it works.

Cloud Storage is a service for storing your objects inGoogle Cloud. An object is an immutable piece of data consisting of a file ofany format. You store objects in containers called buckets. All bucketsare associated with a project, and you can group your projects under anorganization. Each project, bucket, and object in Google Cloud is aresource in Google Cloud, as are things such asCompute Engine instances.

After you create a project, you can create Cloud Storage buckets,upload objects to your buckets, and download objects from yourbuckets. You can also grant permissions to make your data accessible toprincipals you specify, or - for certain use cases such as hosting a website -accessible to everyone on the public internet.

The Cloud Storage structure looks like this:

Here's how the Cloud Storage structure can apply to a real-world case:

Organization: Your company, called Example Inc., creates a Google Cloudorganization called exampleinc.org.

Project: Example Inc. is building several applications, and each one isassociated with a project. Each project has its own set ofCloud Storage APIs, as well as other resources.

Bucket: Each project can contain multiple buckets, which are containers tostore your objects. For example, you might create a photos bucket for all theimage files your app generates and a separate videos bucket.

Object: An individual file, such as an image called puppy.png.

Here are some basic ways you can interact with Cloud Storage:

Console: The Google Cloud console provides a visual interface foryou to manage your data in a browser.

Google Cloud CLI: The gcloud CLI allows you to interactwith Cloud Storage through a terminal usinggcloud storage commands.

Client libraries: The Cloud Storage client libraries allowyou to manage your data using one of your preferred languages, including C++,C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

REST APIs: Manage your data using the JSON or XML API.

Terraform: Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code (IaC)tool that you can use to provision the infrastructure forCloud Storage.

Once you upload your objects to Cloud Storage, you have fine-grainedcontrol over how you secure and share your data. Here are some ways to securethe data you upload to Cloud Storage:

Identity and Access Management: Use IAM to control who has access to theresources in your Google Cloud project. Resources include Cloud Storagebuckets and objects, as well as other Google Cloud entities such asCompute Engine instances. You can grant principals certain types of accessto buckets and objects, such as update, create, or delete.

Data encryption: Cloud Storage uses server-side encryption toencrypt your data by default. You can also use supplemental dataencryption options such as customer-managed encryption keys andcustomer-supplied encryption keys.

Authentication: Ensure that anyone who accesses your data has propercredentials.

Bucket Lock: Govern how long objects in buckets must be retained byspecifying a retention policy.

Object Versioning: When a live version of an object is replaced ordeleted, it can be retained as a noncurrent version if youenable Object Versioning.

You can get started with Hosting a static website to learn how to uploadand share your site's files through a Cloud Storage bucket. To learnhow to use Cloud Storage with other Google Cloud services,covering a variety of topics including Big Data, web development, machinelearning, and containers, see Google Cloud tutorials usingCloud Storage.

Each resource has a unique name that identifies it, much like a filename.Buckets have a resource name in the form ofprojects/_/buckets/BUCKET_NAME, whereBUCKET_NAME is the ID of the bucket. Objects have aresource name in the form ofprojects/_/buckets/BUCKET_NAME/objects/OBJECT_NAME,where OBJECT_NAME is the ID of the object.

A #NUMBER appended to the end of the resource nameindicates a specific generation of the object. #0 is a special identifier forthe most recent version of an object. #0 is useful to add when the name ofthe object ends in a string that would otherwise be interpreted as a generationnumber.

To learn the fundamentals of using Cloud Storage, visit the followingguides:

If Cloud Storage is not the right storage solution for you, see moreinformation about the following storage services:

Originally posted here:
What is Cloud Storage? | Google Cloud