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.
Cloud Storage stores object data in the selected location in accordance with the Service Specific Terms.
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 |
|
|
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.
When transferring to a new bucket, consider if the current storage class still suits your needs.
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
|
|
| 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-SOUTHEAST1 |
Singapore | |
ASIA-SOUTH11 |
Mumbai | |
ASIA-SOUTH21 |
Delhi | |
ASIA12 |
Tokyo + Osaka | |
| Europe | ||
EUROPE-NORTH1 |
Finland | |
EUROPE-WEST1 |
Belgium | |
EUROPE-WEST4 |
Netherlands | |
EUR43 |
Finland + Netherlands | |
| North America | ||
US-CENTRAL1 |
Iowa | |
US-EAST1 |
South Carolina | |
US-EAST4 |
Northern Virginia | |
US-EAST54 |
Columbus | |
US-SOUTH1 |
Dallas | |
US-WEST1 |
Oregon | |
US-WEST4 |
Las Vegas | |
NAM43 |
Iowa + South Carolina |
1ASIA-SOUTH1 and ASIA-SOUTH2 must currently be paired together
and use a LOCATION parameter set to IN.
2An additional Asia dual-region pair consisting of ASIA-NORTHEAST1
and ASIA-NORTHEAST2 can currently only be created using the predefined
dual-region ASIA1.
3EUR4 and NAM4 are legacy, predefined dual-regions which are not
recommended for new buckets.
4US-EAST5 must currently be paired with either US-CENTRAL1 or
US-EAST1.
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.
- Explore the storage classes available in Cloud Storage.
- 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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