GCP Associate Cloud Engineer Practice Question

Your company stores 4 TB of database backup files in Cloud Storage and must retain them for seven years. Operations staff rarely need the backups, but auditors download several files roughly once every quarter. The files must stay immediately accessible without any restore process. To minimize total cost while satisfying these requirements, which Cloud Storage class should you choose?

Store the backups in a single-region Cloud Storage bucket using the Coldline storage class.
Store the backups in a single-region Cloud Storage bucket using the Archive storage class.
Store the backups in a single-region Cloud Storage bucket using the Nearline storage class.
Store the backups in a multi-region Cloud Storage bucket using the Standard storage class.

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Answer Description

Coldline storage is designed for data that is accessed less than once every 90 days, offering a very low storage price while still providing millisecond-level access to objects, so no restore operation is required. Because the backups are retrieved only quarterly, Coldline's higher per-GB retrieval charges remain infrequent enough that total cost is lower than Nearline (higher monthly storage cost) and Standard (highest storage cost). Archive storage has the lowest storage price but is optimized for data accessed less than once per year; retrieving data every quarter would incur significantly higher retrieval costs, likely exceeding the savings from its lower storage price. Therefore, a single-region Coldline bucket best balances storage and access costs for this access pattern.

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