Companies with mountains of cloud-based documents often shift older and little-used data to what is known as "cold storage," which keeps things secure for less money but can take longer to access.
But what if you ship data off to cold storage and then realize you need quick access to it after all? Or can't afford to set up another server in your office? Google has a new solution, dubbed Nearline, that aims to combat that headache.
Google Product Manager Avtandil Garakanidze said Nearline, currently in beta, is "a simple, low-cost, fast-response storage service with quick data backup, retrieval and access." For 1 cent per GB of data at rest, Garakanidze promised response times around three seconds.
"Many of you operate a tiered data storage and archival process, in which data moves from expensive online storage to offline cold storage," Garakanidze wrote in a blog post. "We know the value of having access to all of your data on demand, so Nearline enables you to easily back up and store limitless amounts of data at a very low cost and access it at any time in a matter of seconds."
On the security front, Nearline includes redundant storage at multiple physical locations, as well as OAuth and granular access controls. It will also be fully integrated with other Google Cloud Storage services. There's no need to adopt new programming models since "data manipulation behavior remains the same across Google Cloud Storage services," Garakanidze wrote.
"We know that changing your storage platforms and processes isn't easy," he continued, so Google has secured partnerships with backup and storage providers like Veritas/Symantec, NetApp, Iron Mountain, and Geminare.
Nearline will go up against offerings from rivals like Amazon, which has a similar service known as Glacier.
For more, check out the Nearline documentation.