Question

A media company stores 400 TB of user-uploaded video in a Cloud Storage Standard bucket. Analytics show that objects are heavily accessed for the first 30 days after upload, occasionally accessed until about 120 days, and almost never accessed after that—yet they must be retained for 7 years for legal reasons. The FinOps team wants to minimize storage cost while ensuring recent uploads remain instantly available at low latency. Which approach best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure an Object Lifecycle Management policy that transitions objects to Nearline after 30 days, to Coldline after 120 days, and to Archive after 365 days.

Answer

Move the entire bucket to Archive storage class immediately and rely on restore operations whenever a video is accessed.

Answer

Enable Autoclass on a new bucket configured only to promote objects to Standard on access, without any transition to colder tiers.

Answer

Keep all objects in Standard and purchase a committed use discount for Cloud Storage to reduce the per-GB price.