Bucket locations

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 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.
The location type determines how you data is replicated and priced.
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	Data redundancy across availability zones (synchronous) RTO=0: automated failover and failback on zonal failure (no need to change storage paths)	Higher availability than regional Data redundancy across regions (asynchronous) Turbo replication option for replication within 15 minutes RTO=0: automated failover and failback on regional failure (no need to change storage paths)	Higher availability than regional Data redundancy across regions (asynchronous) RTO=0: automated failover and failback on regional failure (no need to change storage paths)
Performance	200 Gbps (per region, per project) Scalable to many Tbps by requesting higher bandwidth quota	200 Gbps (per region, per project) Scalable to many Tbps by requesting higher bandwidth quota	50 Gbps (per region, per project) Limited performance scaling, variable performance for reads
Pricing	Lowest storage price No replication charges No egress charges when reading data inside the same region	Highest storage price Replication charges apply on write No egress charges when reading data within either region	Higher storage price than regional, but lower than dual-region Replication charges apply on write Egress charges always apply when reading data

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
Optimized latency and bandwidth Lowest data storage cost Cross-zone redundancy	Regional	Analytics Backup and archive
Optimized latency and bandwidth Cross-region redundancy	Dual-region¹	Analytics Backup and archive Disaster recovery
Cross-geography data access Highest availability	Multi-region	Content serving

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

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-CENTRAL1`	Doha
	`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 be within the same multi-region. You include the code for that multi-region in the LOCATION parameter when creating your bucket, and that multi-region code is also specified when using customer-managed encryption keys or the resource locations constraint with a your dual-region.

The following regions are currently supported for creating dual-regions:

Multi-region code	Region Name	Region Description
`ASIA`
	`ASIA-EAST1`	Taiwan
	`ASIA-NORTHEAST1`¹	Tokyo
	`ASIA-NORTHEAST2`¹	Osaka
	`ASIA-SOUTHEAST1`	Singapore
`EU`
	`EUROPE-CENTRAL2`	Warsaw
	`EUROPE-NORTH1`²	Finland
	`EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1`	Madrid
	`EUROPE-WEST1`	Belgium
	`EUROPE-WEST3`	Frankfurt
	`EUROPE-WEST4`²	Netherlands
	`EUROPE-WEST8`	Milan
	`EUROPE-WEST9`	Paris
`IN`
	`ASIA-SOUTH1`	Mumbai
	`ASIA-SOUTH2`	Delhi
`US`
	`US-CENTRAL1`³	Iowa
	`US-EAST1` ³	South Carolina
	`US-EAST4`	Northern Virginia
	`US-EAST5`⁴	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.

²The EUROPE-NORTH1 and EUROPE-WEST4 dual-region pairing behaves differently than typical dual-region pairings. For more information, see predefined dual-regions.

³The US-CENTRAL1 and US-EAST1 dual-region pairing behaves differently than typical dual-region pairings. For more information, see predefined dual-regions.

⁴US-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

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