As Cloud Computing model is gaining steam worldwide, organisations are racing to launch Cloud based products and services in order to be the pioneers and capture a large market share of the "next big thing." One important and common usage of Cloud Computing platform is storage of data on the Cloud infrastructure. Storing data is one of the most basic requirements of any organisation or individual, and as the world keeps on churning out new information, the need for data storage keeps on increasing. In that sense, Cloud storage services can become a stable revenue producing product offering. After a slew of launches from the competitors such as Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure Storage Services, Google recently came up with its own storage service which aims at providing organisations and individuals with a simple and easy way to upload, share, and manage data on Google's cloud infrastructure.
Google launched its Google Storage for Developers service in May 2010 during its I/O conference and aims at providing a number of products and tools in conjunction in order to make its Cloud offerings more attractive and competitive than other similar offerings in the marketplace. Google Storage for Developers allows users to easily upload, share, and manage data through a simple Web based interface or command line tools. Using Google Storage, users can store files of all sizes up to 100 Gb and of any type ranging from a simple text file to a complex database. A basic unit in Google Storage is a bucket (similar to a folder) which acts as a container of data and everything resides inside of a bucket.
Google Storage follows a flat hierarchical structure just like a flat file structure which means that all buckets reside inside a single flat hierarchy and you cannot nest buckets inside of each other. Data which has to be stored inside Google Storage is called as objects and is placed inside of a bucket. An object is comprised of two parts: an object data which is the actual data which you want to store, and its corresponding object metadata. Users' data is opaque to Google Storage and objects are immutable in the sense that you cannot incrementally add data to objects. If users want to add more data to an existing object, then users have to overwrite the existing object with the new object. Uploads in Google Storage are atomic in nature, which means that objects are either entirely updated or not updated at all. One cannot read fractions of an object. Because of the flat hierarchical system, there is only one namespace which means that every bucket must have a unique name in the entire Google Storage namespace. Objects, however, need to have unique names inside of a bucket only and can have identical names across different buckets.
Through launch of Google Storage, Google has attempted to make strong inroads in the Cloud storage space and aims at providing easy and efficient ways of uploading, managing and sharing data on Cloud Computing. Its security and authentication features also aim to address the all important issue of security in Cloud Computing space. The service can be used by a number of prospective users ranging from individuals to corporations who need to store huge chunks of data and can then access it cheaply and efficiently.