Now that we’ve covered Google Cloud’s
core storage options, let’s do a comparison to help highlight the most suitable service
for a specific application or workflow. Consider using Cloud Storage if you need to
store immutable blobs larger than 10 megabytes, such as large images or movies. This storage service provides petabytes of
capacity with a maximum unit size of 5 terabytes per object. Consider using Cloud SQL or Cloud Spanner
if you need full SQL support for an online transaction processing system. Cloud SQL provides up to 64 terabytes, depending
on machine type, and Cloud Spanner provides petabytes. Cloud SQL is best for web frameworks and existing
applications, like storing user credentials and customer orders. If Cloud SQL doesn’t fit your requirements
because you need horizontal scalability, not just through read replicas, consider using
Cloud Spanner. Consider Firestore if you need massive scaling
and predictability together with real time query results and offline query support. This storage service provides terabytes of
capacity with a maximum unit size of 1 megabyte per entity. Firestore is best for storing, syncing, and
querying data for mobile and web apps. Finally, consider using Cloud Bigtable if
you need to store a large number of structured objects. Cloud Bigtable doesn’t support SQL queries,
nor does it support multi-row transactions. This storage service provides petabytes of
capacity with a maximum unit size of 10 megabytes per cell and 100 megabytes per row. Bigtable is best for analytical data with
heavy read and write events, like AdTech, financial, or IoT data. Depending on your application, it’s possible
that you might use one, or several, of these services to do the job. You may have noticed that BigQuery hasn’t
been mentioned in this section of the course. This is because it sits on the edge between
data storage and data processing, and is covered in more depth in other courses. The usual reason to store data in BigQuery
is so you can use its big data analysis and interactive querying capabilities, but it’s
not purely a data storage product.