Question

A pharmaceutical company is designing a data platform for clinical trial results. Regulators require that all raw trial data be retained for 15 years and remain retrievable within a few hours if audited. Only the most recent 90 days of data is queried frequently by analysts; older data is accessed at most once or twice a year. The company wants to minimize total storage cost while satisfying the retention and retrievability requirements. Which storage design should the architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Store recent data in Cloud Storage Standard, and use Object Lifecycle Management to transition objects to Nearline after 90 days and to Archive after one year, with a bucket retention policy of 15 years.

Answer

Store all data in Cloud Storage Standard class and rely on a 15-year retention policy to prevent deletion.

Answer

Load all trial data into BigQuery and use long-term storage pricing for partitions older than 90 days.

Answer

Store recent data in Cloud Storage Standard and move older data to Coldline immediately after 90 days, deleting objects manually after 15 years.