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Google Cloud Storage is an indispensable part of a big data infrastructure
February 21, 2019

Google Cloud Storage is an indispensable part of a big data infrastructure

Anatoly Geyfman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Google Cloud Storage

We use Google Cloud Storage (GCS) for a variety of needs. My company manages terabytes of healthcare claims data, which we analyze and present to our customers in an easy-to-use application, mobile app, and reports. We use GCS to stage raw claims data for injection, to stage post-processed data for indexing, and for intermediary storage for a variety of analytics tools.
  • Really great, easy to use interface helps us manage files easily. Storage is fast and inexpensive, so we don't have to spin up storage instances locally
  • Great set of command-line tools to manage data and storage options via scripts and apps, as well as an SDK means we can build GCS into our orchestration and operations tools
  • Robust integration with other Google cloud tools means that we don't have to think too hard about using GCS for a variety of storage tasks as we interact with other Google services.
  • Some CLI options are a little more difficult to use, like parallel uploads
  • The new user interface hides an option (create public link) that we've used a bunch —still there but much less intuitive
  • Not straightforward to make files public or to change file policies
  • Google Cloud Storage has reduced our overall storage costs by helping us manage tiered storage of data
  • Integrating GCS with other google storage services means we don't have to go out of Google Cloud to process our data, saving on outbound bandwidth costs
  • GCS has made integration into our tools really simple, so we can automate most workflows.
We selected GCS vs. others because we decided to use other Google Cloud services. Since we integrated GCS into our tools, we're still using GCS today, even though we've largely transitioned away from Google Compute services. GCS is still a very solid choice, even if your server infrastructure is not hosted by Google. Moreover, its integration with BigQuery has been a big boost for us.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Trifacta, Google BigQuery
Excellent upload and download performance, excellent UI and a robust set of tools make GCS a must-have tool in our overall technical stack. Since we use so many data processes, GCS is a clutch player to help us orchestrate both input, intermediate storage, and output of all of these data processes. Because it's one tool for all of these processes, our applications get the benefit of having to need only one SDK to work against.
super usable UI for interactive storage workflows (setting ACLs, adding/removing files ad-hoc). Also an excellent set of CLI tools (command-line interfaces) for interacting with GCS via shell scripts, as well as a robust SDK for interacting with GCS via our applications. We leverage all of these to make sure that all of our services that need storage can use GCS.
If you're interacting with Google Cloud services, you should be using GCS. GCS is by far the easiest storage to use in conjunction with other Google Cloud applications. Google cloud services are also great when you have tools that need to manage large amounts of intermediary data, as the access for both writing and reading is very good. Finally, if you're doing any data work, it's really easy to use GCS in conjunction with BigQuery.

Google Cloud Storage Feature Ratings