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Difficulty: HardPlanning Cloud Storage Buckets and Storage Classes

A financial engineering team generates daily transactional reconciliation files that must be stored in Google Cloud Storage. Analytical workloads read each file dozens of times daily for the first 45 days after creation. From day 46 through day 180, files are queried less than once a month for periodic reporting. After 180 days, files are retained solely for regulatory compliance and are retrieved fewer than once per year. Which Object Lifecycle Management policy minimizes overall expenses while accommodating this access pattern?

  1. Set the default bucket class to Standard storage, transition objects to Nearline storage after 45 days, and transition objects to Archive storage after 180 days.Answer
  2. B
    Set the default bucket class to Nearline storage, transition objects to Coldline storage after 45 days, and transition objects to Archive storage after 180 days.
  3. C
    Set the default bucket class to Standard storage, transition objects to Coldline storage after 15 days, and transition objects to Archive storage after 45 days.
  4. D
    Set the default bucket class to Archive storage immediately upon upload and configure a lifecycle rule to rewrite objects to Standard storage whenever they are read.

Answer

The optimal strategy is setting the default bucket storage class to Standard, transitioning objects to Nearline storage after 45 days, and transitioning to Archive storage after 180 days.
Using Standard storage initially prevents data retrieval charges while files are read repeatedly during the first 45 days. Transitioning to Nearline at day 45 matches the reduced access pattern (< 1/month) while satisfying Nearline's 30-day minimum retention period before transitioning to Archive at day 180 for low-cost, long-term regulatory retention.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze access frequency for Days 1–45
Heavy daily reads occur during this period. Standard storage class has zero retrieval charges, making it the most cost-effective tier for high-frequency access.
Lower storage tiers (Nearline, Coldline, Archive) charge data retrieval fees per gigabyte, which would become prohibitively expensive under daily access.
2
Analyze access frequency and duration for Days 46–180
Access drops to less than once per month. Nearline storage is optimized for data accessed at most once a month and has a 30-day minimum storage duration.
Transitioning at day 45 allows data to reside in Nearline until day 180 (135 days total), well past the 30-day minimum retention requirement, avoiding early transition penalties.
3
Analyze long-term compliance retention for Day 181+
Files are kept for regulatory compliance and accessed less than once a year. Archive storage offers the lowest at-rest storage price per gigabyte.
Archive storage is designed for long-term disaster recovery and legal retention where data is rarely accessed.

Key Concept

Cloud Storage Class Selection & Lifecycle Optimization
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Topics

Planning Cloud Storage Buckets and Storage Classes

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