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 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 your 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, and price, as shown in the following table.

Region Dual-region Multi-region
Availability
  • Data redundancy across availability zones (synchronous)
  • RTO(recovery time objective)=0: automated failover and failback on zonal failure (no need to change storage paths)
  • Higher availability than regions for a given storage class
  • Data redundancy across regions (asynchronous)
  • Turbo replication option for replication within 15 minutes
  • RTO(recovery time objective)=0: automated failover and failback on regional failure (no need to change storage paths)
  • Higher availability than regions for a given storage class
  • Data redundancy across regions (asynchronous)
  • RTO(recovery time objective)=0: automated failover and failback on regional failure (no need to change storage paths)
Pricing
  • Lowest storage price
  • No replication charges
  • No outbound data transfer charges when reading data inside the same region
  • Highest storage price
  • Replication charges apply on write
  • No outbound data transfer charges when reading data within either region
  • Higher storage price than regions, but lower than dual-regions
  • Replication charges apply on write
  • Outbound data transfer charges always apply when reading data

Location recommendations

Requirements Recommended bucket location Workload examples
  • Optimized latency and bandwidth
  • Lowest data storage cost
  • Cross-zone redundancy
Region
  • Analytics
  • Backup and archive
  • Optimized latency and bandwidth
  • Cross-region redundancy, with precise control of the locations where copies of data are stored
Dual-region1
  • Analytics
  • Backup and archive
  • Disaster recovery
  • Cross-geography data access
  • Cross-region redundancy
Multi-region
  • Content serving
  1. 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). Regions and dual-regions are both suitable for this purpose.
  • To avoid data replication charges, store short-lived datasets in regions.
  • 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 leaf icon Low CO2
NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST2 Toronto leaf icon Low CO2
US-CENTRAL1 Iowa leaf icon Low CO2
US-EAST1 South Carolina
US-EAST4 Northern Virginia
US-EAST5 Columbus
US-SOUTH1 Dallas leaf icon Low CO2
US-WEST1 Oregon leaf icon Low CO2
US-WEST2 Los Angeles
US-WEST3 Salt Lake City
US-WEST4 Las Vegas
South America
SOUTHAMERICA-EAST1 São Paulo leaf icon Low CO2
SOUTHAMERICA-WEST1 Santiago leaf icon Low CO2
Europe
EUROPE-CENTRAL2 Warsaw
EUROPE-NORTH1 Finland leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1 Madrid leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-WEST1 Belgium leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-WEST2 London leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-WEST3 Frankfurt leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-WEST4 Netherlands leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-WEST6 Zürich leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-WEST8 Milan
EUROPE-WEST9 Paris leaf icon Low CO2
EUROPE-WEST10 Berlin leaf icon 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-CENTRAL2 Dammam, Saudi Arabia
ME-WEST1 Tel Aviv
Australia
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST1 Sydney
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST2 Melbourne
Africa
AFRICA-SOUTH1 Johannesburg

Dual-regions

Objects stored in dual-region buckets are replicated so that they are stored in each region that make up the dual-region. The time it takes an object to be replicated between the two regions is determined by the bucket's replication setting.

There are two types of dual-regions supported in Cloud Storage.

  • A predefined dual-region is identified by a unique location code and represents two specific regions. For example, NAM4 is the location code for the predefined dual-region consisting of US-CENTRAL1 and US-EAST1.

  • A configurable dual-region is identified by the location code of the geographical area in which the dual-region resides and a placement configuration in which you specify a pair of regions. For example, you could create a configurable dual-region that has a location code of EU and a placement configuration consisting of EU-CENTRAL2 and EU-WEST1.

If the regions you want to pair are not available as a dual-region, consider creating a separate bucket in each region and using Storage Transfer Service Event-driven transfers to keep the buckets in sync.

Configurable dual-regions

When creating a bucket in a configurable dual-region, the pair of regions that you use to make the dual-region must use the same location code. This code is set for the LOCATION of the bucket and is also the location you specify when using customer-managed encryption keys or the resource locations constraint with such dual-region buckets.

The following regions are available when creating a configurable dual-region bucket:

Location code Region Name Region Description
ASIA
ASIA-EAST1 Taiwan
ASIA-SOUTHEAST1 Singapore
AU
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST1 Sydney
AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST2 Melbourne
CA
NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST1 Montréal
NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST2 Toronto
EU
EUROPE-CENTRAL2 Warsaw
EUROPE-NORTH11 Finland
EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1 Madrid
EUROPE-WEST1 Belgium
EUROPE-WEST3 Frankfurt
EUROPE-WEST41 Netherlands
EUROPE-WEST8 Milan
EUROPE-WEST9 Paris
IN
ASIA-SOUTH1 Mumbai
ASIA-SOUTH2 Delhi
US
US-CENTRAL12 Iowa
US-EAST1 2 South Carolina
US-EAST4 Northern Virginia
US-EAST53 Columbus
US-SOUTH1 Dallas
US-WEST1 Oregon
US-WEST2 Los Angeles
US-WEST3 Salt Lake City
US-WEST4 Las Vegas

1The EUROPE-NORTH1 and EUROPE-WEST4 dual-region pairing is only available as a predefined dual-region.

2The US-CENTRAL1 and US-EAST1 dual-region pairing is only available as a predefined dual-region.

3US-EAST5 must be paired with either US-CENTRAL1 or US-EAST1.

Attempting to create a bucket using an invalid pairing, such as regions with different location codes, returns an error.

Predefined dual-regions

When creating a bucket in a predefined dual-region, you use a location code that uniquely identifies the pair of regions, in the same way you create buckets in regions and multi-regions. This location code is what you specify when using customer-managed encryption keys or the resource locations constraint with such dual-region buckets.

The following options are available when creating a bucket in a predefined dual-region:

Predefined dual-region name Region Name Region Description
ASIA1 ASIA-NORTHEAST1 + ASIA-NORTHEAST2 Tokyo + Osaka
EUR4 EUROPE-NORTH1 + EUROPE-WEST4 Finland + Netherlands
EUR5 EUROPE-WEST1 + EUROPE-WEST2 Belgium + London
EUR7 EUROPE-WEST2 + EUROPE-WEST3 London + Frankfurt
EUR8 EUROPE-WEST3 + EUROPE-WEST6 Frankfurt + Zürich
NAM4 US-CENTRAL1 + US-EAST1 Iowa + South Carolina

Multi-regions

Multi-Region Name Multi-Region Description
ASIA Data centers in Asia, excluding Hong Kong and Indonesia
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 (Zürich) regions.

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