This page explains the concept of bucket location and the different locations where you can create buckets. A bucket's location defines the physical place where object data in the bucket resides.
To learn how to set the location for your bucket, see Create storage buckets.
Key concepts
You permanently set a geographic location for storing your object data when you create a bucket.
- You cannot change a bucket's location after it's created, but you can move your data to a bucket in a different location.
You can select from the following location types:
A region is a specific geographic place, such as São Paulo.
A dual-region is a specific pair of regions, such as Tokyo and Osaka.
A multi-region is a large geographic area, such as the United States, that contains two or more geographic places.
All Cloud Storage data is redundant across at least two zones within at least one geographic place as soon as you upload it.
Additionally, objects stored in a multi-region or dual-region are geo-redundant. Objects that are geo-redundant are stored redundantly in at least two separate geographic places separated by at least 100 miles.
Default replication is designed to provide geo-redundancy for 99.9% of newly written objects within a target of one hour. Newly written objects include uploads, rewrites, copies, and compositions.
Turbo replication provides geo-redundancy for all newly written objects within a target of 15 minutes. Applicable only for dual-region buckets.
If a region becomes unavailable after an object is successfully uploaded but before the object becomes geo-redundant, Cloud Storage's strong consistency ensures that stale versions of the object won't be served and that subsequent overwrites aren't reverted when the region becomes available again.
Multi-regions provide geo-redundancy at a lower storage cost than dual-regions because data is flexibly stored: the specific data centers used within a multi-region are determined by Cloud Storage as needed.
Cloud Storage stores object data in the selected location in accordance with the Service Specific Terms.
The location information for a bucket is part of the bucket's metadata, which you can view if you have permission to do so.
Location considerations
When you choose the location for a Cloud Storage bucket, consider the differences in availability, price, and performance, as shown in the following table.
| Regional | Dual-region | Multi-region | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Availability1 |
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| Performance |
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| Pricing |
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- The service level objective (SLO) for each location option depends on the storage class of the bucket. See the Cloud Storage Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Location recommendations
| Requirements | Recommended bucket location | Workload examples |
|---|---|---|
|
Regional |
|
|
Dual-region1 |
|
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Multi-region |
|
- If you need a short and predictable recovery point objective (RPO), enable the premium turbo replication feature.
- To maximize performance and lower your total cost of ownership, co-locate your data and compute in the same region(s). Regional and dual-region locations are both suitable for this purpose.
- To avoid data replication charges, store short-lived datasets in regional locations.
For moderate performance and ad hoc analytics workloads, multi-region storage can be a cost-effective choice.
See the data storage pricing table for storage costs in each location.
Compute Engine VM notes
- Storing data in the same region as your Compute Engine VM instances can provide better performance. This advantage applies to both regions and dual-regions.
- While you can't specify a Compute Engine zone as a bucket location, all Compute Engine VM instances in zones within a given region have similar performance when accessing buckets in that region.
Available locations
The following sections list the Cloud Storage locations available for storing your data.
Regions
All regions are at least 100 miles apart.
| Geographic Area | Region Name | Region Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| North America | |||
NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST1 |
Montréal |
 Low CO2
|
|
NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST2 |
Toronto |
Low CO2
|
|
US-CENTRAL1 |
Iowa |
Low CO2
|
|
US-EAST1 |
South Carolina | ||
US-EAST4 |
Northern Virginia | ||
US-EAST5 |
Columbus | ||
US-SOUTH1 |
Dallas | ||
US-WEST1 |
Oregon |
Low CO2 |
|
US-WEST2 |
Los Angeles | ||
US-WEST3 |
Salt Lake City | ||
US-WEST4 |
Las Vegas | ||
| South America | |||
SOUTHAMERICA-EAST1 |
São Paulo |
Low CO2
|
|
SOUTHAMERICA-WEST1 |
Santiago | ||
| Europe | |||
EUROPE-CENTRAL2 |
Warsaw | ||
EUROPE-NORTH1 |
Finland |
Low CO2
|
|
EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1 |
Madrid |
Low CO2
|
|
EUROPE-WEST1 |
Belgium |
Low CO2
|
|
EUROPE-WEST2 |
London | ||
EUROPE-WEST3 |
Frankfurt | ||
EUROPE-WEST4 |
Netherlands | ||
EUROPE-WEST6 |
Zürich |
Low CO2
|
|
EUROPE-WEST8 |
Milan | ||
EUROPE-WEST9 |
Paris |
Low CO2
|
|
EUROPE-WEST12 |
Turin | ||
| Asia | |||
ASIA-EAST1 |
Taiwan | ||
ASIA-EAST2 |
Hong Kong | ||
ASIA-NORTHEAST1 |
Tokyo | ||
ASIA-NORTHEAST2 |
Osaka | ||
ASIA-NORTHEAST3 |
Seoul | ||
ASIA-SOUTHEAST1 |
Singapore | ||
| India | |||
ASIA-SOUTH1 |
Mumbai | ||
ASIA-SOUTH2 |
Delhi | ||
| Indonesia | |||
ASIA-SOUTHEAST2 |
Jakarta | ||
| Middle East | |||
ME-WEST1 |
Tel Aviv | ||
| Australia | |||
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST1 |
Sydney | ||
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST2 |
Melbourne |
Dual-regions
When creating a dual-region bucket, the pair of regions that you use to make the dual-region must reside in the same geographic area.
The following regions are currently supported for creating dual-regions:
| Geographic Area | Region Name | Region Description |
|---|---|---|
| Asia | ||
ASIA-EAST1 |
Taiwan | |
ASIA-NORTHEAST11 |
Tokyo | |
ASIA-NORTHEAST21 |
Osaka | |
ASIA-SOUTHEAST1 |
Singapore | |
ASIA-SOUTH12 |
Mumbai | |
ASIA-SOUTH22 |
Delhi | |
| Europe | ||
EUROPE-CENTRAL2 |
Warsaw | |
EUROPE-NORTH13 |
Finland | |
EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1 |
Madrid | |
EUROPE-WEST1 |
Belgium | |
EUROPE-WEST3 |
Frankfurt | |
EUROPE-WEST43 |
Netherlands | |
EUROPE-WEST8 |
Milan | |
EUROPE-WEST9 |
Paris | |
| North America | ||
US-CENTRAL14 |
Iowa | |
US-EAST1 4 |
South Carolina | |
US-EAST4 |
Northern Virginia | |
US-EAST55 |
Columbus | |
US-SOUTH1 |
Dallas | |
US-WEST1 |
Oregon | |
US-WEST2 |
Los Angeles | |
US-WEST3 |
Salt Lake City | |
US-WEST4 |
Las Vegas |
1ASIA-NORTHEAST1 and ASIA-NORTHEAST2 must currently be paired
together, and this dual region pairing behaves differently than typical
dual-region pairings. For more information, see
predefined dual-regions.
2ASIA-SOUTH1 and ASIA-SOUTH2 must currently be paired together
and use a LOCATION parameter set to IN. This location must be specified when
using customer-managed encryption keys or the
resource locations constraint with this dual-region pairing.
3The EUROPE-NORTH1 and EUROPE-WEST4 dual-region pairing behaves
differently than typical dual-region pairings. For more information, see
predefined dual-regions.
4The US-CENTRAL1 and US-EAST1 dual-region pairing behaves
differently than typical dual-region pairings. For more information, see
predefined dual-regions.
5US-EAST5 must currently be paired with either US-CENTRAL1 or
US-EAST1.
Predefined dual-regions
The following dual-region pairings exist only as predefined dual-regions, which differ in some ways from most dual-region pairings:
| Predefined dual-region name | Region Description |
|---|---|
ASIA1 |
Tokyo + Osaka |
EUR4 |
Finland + Netherlands |
NAM4 |
Iowa + South Carolina |
Keep in mind the following when using predefined dual-regions:
Predefined dual-regions generally cannot be created using a typical dual-region creation workflow. They must be created without a custom placement configuration and with their predefined dual-region name set as the location. Once created, such buckets display the predefined dual-region name as the location and do not contain a custom placement configuration.
- Some tools hide some or all of this behavior for predefined dual-regions. For example, in the Google Cloud console, bucket creation is the same for all dual-region pairs. However, once created, the Google Cloud console displays the location of predefined dual-regions using their predefined name, and such buckets are subject to the rest of the considerations listed in this section.
Predefined dual-regions require different Cloud KMS keys compared to other dual-regions in the same continent. For more information, see Customer-managed encryption key restrictions.
Predefined dual-regions bill storage usage against their locational SKUs, whereas typical dual-regions bill against their underlying regions.
When using the resource locations constraint in an organization policy, predefined dual-regions are not included with the multi-region in which they reside, whereas typical dual-regions are. Predefined dual-regions must either be explicitly added when setting the constraint, or be part of a value group that's included in the constraint.
Multi-regions
| Multi-Region Name | Multi-Region Description |
|---|---|
ASIA |
Data centers in Asia |
EU |
Data centers within member states of the European Union* |
US |
Data centers in the United States |
* Object data added to a bucket in the EU multi-region is not
stored in the EUROPE-WEST2 (London) or EUROPE-WEST6 (Zurich) regions.
What's next
- Create a bucket.
- Get the location for an existing bucket by viewing the bucket's metadata.
- Learn more about dual-regions.
- View all the Google Cloud services available in locations worldwide.
- Explore additional location-based concepts, such as zones, that apply to other Google Cloud services.
Try it for yourself
If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how Cloud Storage performs in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
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