Google's Nearline service now available to businesses with 100 PB of free cloud storage

Google has announced general availability of its Cloud Storage Nearline – a service that allows enterprises to backup and store infinite ’non-essential’ data at a “very low cost and access it at any time in a matter of seconds." Nearline provides all the benefits of cold storage while making the data immediately available. Unlike its competitors, Nearline enables ~3 second response times for data retrieval and improves SLAs, the company said while announcing this service in March this year . [caption id=“attachment_1237081” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AP[/caption] The company said it is introducing on-demand I/O that will allow users to increase I/O in situations where they need to retrieve data from a Google Cloud Storage Nearline bucket faster than the provisioned 4 MB/s read throughput per TB of data stored. During the first three months after launch, on-demand I/O will be offered at no additional charge. In addition, the search engine giant is also launching a new Cloud Storage Transfer Service (previously referred to as Online Cloud Import) that allows organisations to easily import large amounts of online data from HTTP/HTTPS locations, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), into Google Cloud Storage. “You now will be able to configure one-time data migrations, as well as schedule recurring data transfers. Cloud Storage Transfer Service will also allow you to perform lifecycle management. Google Cloud Storage now offers you a way to simplify the lifecycle management of your objects, including automated archival to Cloud Storage Nearline and scheduled deletions,” Google said in a blog post. Also, Google is introducing Switch and Save programme with which users may receive 100PB of free storage in Cloud Storage Nearline for up to 6 months. “As a new Google Cloud Platform customer, you will be able to switch from any other Cloud Service Provider or on-premises infrastructure and significantly reduce your storage costs. We’ve also created a TCO calculator to help you estimate your savings on Google Cloud Storage versus Amazon Web Services,” the blog post added.