Cloud Storage

Cloud Storage

Cloud Storage is GCP’s object storage service — store files, images, backups, static assets, and data lakes. It’s equivalent to AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage.

Storage Classes

Class	Use Case	Min Duration	Cost
Standard	Frequently accessed data	None	Highest
Nearline	Once a month or less	30 days	Lower
Coldline	Once a quarter or less	90 days	Lower
Archive	Long-term backups	365 days	Lowest

Creating Buckets

# Create a bucket (globally unique name required)
gcloud storage buckets create gs://my-bucket-name \
  --location=europe-west2 \
  --default-storage-class=standard

Bucket names are globally unique across all GCP customers.

Uploading and Downloading

# Upload a file
gcloud storage cp ./local-file.txt gs://my-bucket-name/

# Upload a directory recursively
gcloud storage cp -r ./dist/ gs://my-bucket-name/

# Download a file
gcloud storage cp gs://my-bucket-name/remote-file.txt ./

# List objects
gcloud storage ls gs://my-bucket-name/
gcloud storage ls -l gs://my-bucket-name/  # with sizes

# Delete an object
gcloud storage rm gs://my-bucket-name/old-file.txt

Access Control

Uniform bucket-level access (recommended):

# Make a bucket publicly readable
gcloud storage buckets add-iam-policy-binding gs://my-bucket-name \
  --member=allUsers \
  --role=roles/storage.objectViewer

# Grant a user write access
gcloud storage buckets add-iam-policy-binding gs://my-bucket-name \
  --member=user:user@example.com \
  --role=roles/storage.objectAdmin

Object-level ACL (legacy):

gcloud storage objects update gs://my-bucket-name/file.txt \
  --predefined-acl=publicRead

Static Website Hosting

# Set the main page and 404 page
gcloud storage buckets update gs://my-bucket-name \
  --web-main-page-suffix=index.html \
  --web-error-page=404.html

# Make bucket public
gcloud storage buckets add-iam-policy-binding gs://my-bucket-name \
  --member=allUsers \
  --role=roles/storage.objectViewer

The bucket’s public URL is:

https://storage.googleapis.com/my-bucket-name/index.html

Use Cloud CDN or a load balancer in front for custom domains + HTTPS.

Lifecycle Rules

Automatically transition or delete objects:

{
  "rule": [
    {
      "action": { "type": "SetStorageClass", "storageClass": "NEARLINE" },
      "condition": { "age": 30 }
    },
    {
      "action": { "type": "Delete" },
      "condition": { "age": 365 }
    }
  ]
}

gcloud storage buckets update gs://my-bucket-name \
  --lifecycle-file=lifecycle.json

Signed URLs

Generate time-limited URLs to grant temporary access without authentication:

gcloud storage sign-url gs://my-bucket-name/private-file.pdf \
  --duration=1h \
  --private-key-file=service-account-key.json

gsutil vs gcloud storage

gcloud storage is the newer, recommended CLI. gsutil (older) is still widely used:

# gsutil equivalents
gsutil cp ./file.txt gs://my-bucket/
gsutil ls gs://my-bucket/
gsutil rm gs://my-bucket/file.txt

Common Patterns

Backup to Cloud Storage:

# Database backup
pg_dump mydb | gzip | gcloud storage cp - gs://my-backups/db-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz

Sync a local directory:

gcloud storage rsync -r ./build/ gs://my-bucket/