How to use Google Cloud storage

Google cloud storage is a cloud-based object storage service offered by Google cloud platform (GCP). GCP's cloud storage allows you to store and retrieve unstructured data, in scalable and durable manner.

How to use Google Cloud storage

1. Sign in to you GCP account or create an account. Once signed in the dashboard will open. Select cloud storage.

2. In the cloud storage window, click on the create bucket button.

3. In the next window, give your bucket a name and choose a location type for your bucket. You will choose:

   1. Region: When within a specific region you need data redundancy and low latency.

   2. Dual-region: When you require two geographically seperate regions. The data in a dual- region bucket is simultaneously replicated and stored in both regions.

   3. Multi-region: When you need data availability and low latency across multiple geographic regions.

4. Then, select a storage class for your data.

   1. Autoclass: This feature will chose a class automatically for your bucket based on the object-level activity.

   2. Standard: This provides high performance and low-latency access for data.

   3. Nearline: You can use this if you the objects inside the bucket are not frequently accesses but when needed they should be accessed quickly.

   4. Coldline: Desinged for data that is not accessed quickly and can bear long retrieval time.

   5. Archive: This is intended for data that is rarely accessed and can tolerate retrieval time longer than hours.

While choosing how to control access to objects choose:

• Uniform: If you wan to apply the same access permisions to all objects present in the bucket.

• Fine-grained: If you want to assign specific access permisiions to individual users, groups or service accounts.

5. Next, chose a data protection tool.

   1. Object versioning: This feature is useful for maintaining historical changes to objects and provides data resiliancy in case of accidental modifications.

   2. Retention policy: This is a configuration that enforces a specified retention period for objects in a bucket.

When done, click on create bucket.

6. Your bucket will be created. Now you can upload any object you want by clicking on the upload button.

7. If you want to delete the uploaded object select the object and click on the delete button.

8. Confirm the deletion of object.

9. To delete a bucket, select the bucket and click on delete.

10. Confirm the deletion of bucket by writing "Delete".