Using Google Cloud Storage with Arq

Before you can use Google Cloud Storage with Arq, you’ll need to configure your account via the Google Developers Console.

  1. Log into the Google Developers Console.
  2. Click “Create a project…”. Call it “Arq Backup Data”, or whatever you want. Wait a few seconds while Google creates the project.
  3. In the project dashboard, note the “Project number”. You’ll need that when you configure Arq to back up to it.
  4. At the top left, click the 3-line icon and pick “Billing” from the list of options. Click the button “Enable billing” and follow the steps to enable billing for the project.
  5. In Arq, pick “New Storage Location…” from the File menu. Select Google Cloud Storage and log in. Enter your project number when prompted.

Once you’ve added the Google Cloud Storage account as a storage location in Arq, you can restore from existing backup sets or create a new backup plan.

Google Cloud Storage Classes

Google Cloud Storage offers multiple storage classes, including Multi-Regional, Regional, Nearline, Coldline and Archive.

Coldline and Nearline

Coldline storage is probably the best choice for your Arq backup data. But if you expect to restore data often, Nearline might be a bit cheaper.

Nearline and Coldline storage “are intended for infrequently accessed data”. In addition to normal data transfer charges ($.12 per GB for data transfer out in most destinations), you incur $.01 per GB for reading Nearline storage data, and $.05 per GB for reading Coldline storage data. Nearline data deleted in less than 30 days incurs a minimum 30-day charge. Coldline data deleted in less than 90 days incurs a minimum 90-day charge.

Archive

Archive is extremely inexpensive for data storage, but very expensive for data retrieval. If you intend to store a lot of data and think restoring is very unlikely (e.g. if it’s one of several storage locations for your backups) then Archive might make sense.

Standard

“Standard” storage comes in 2 flavors – regional and multi-regional. Multi-regional storage is geo-redundant and is a bit more expensive.

If you choose a multi-region location but coldline or nearline storage class, Google will store the data in one of the regions that make up the multi-region location.

Full bucket location details are here: https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/bucket-locations

Pricing

Full pricing details are here: https://cloud.google.com/storage/pricing