Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Question
An engineer needs to create a Cloud Storage bucket for storing archival data that will be accessed less than once a year. The data must be stored durably and cost-effectively. Which storage class should the engineer use?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Archive
Archive storage class is designed for data accessed less than once a year, with the lowest storage cost but higher retrieval costs and a 365-day minimum storage duration. It is ideal for long-term archival.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Coldline
Why it's wrong here
Coldline is incorrect because it is optimized for data accessed at most once every 90 days (once a quarter), not once a year. While its storage cost is lower than Standard and Nearline, it remains more expensive than Archive and incurs retrieval fees, making it a poor fit for long-term, rarely accessed archives.
- ✗
Standard
Why it's wrong here
Standard is incorrect because it is designed for frequently accessed, hot data, offering no retrieval fees but the highest storage cost among all classes. Using it for data that is accessed only once a year would be unnecessarily expensive and wasteful, as you would be paying premium rates for storage you rarely touch.
- ✓
Archive
Why this is correct
Archive is correct because it is the only Google Cloud storage class specifically designed for data accessed less than once a year, offering the lowest storage cost. It is ideal for long-term retention, regulatory archives, or disaster recovery backups, with the trade-off of higher retrieval fees and a 365-day minimum storage duration before deletion or class change.
- ✗
Nearline
Why it's wrong here
Nearline is incorrect because it targets data accessed at most once every 30 days (once a month), not once a year. Its storage cost is lower than Standard but higher than Coldline and Archive, and it also charges retrieval fees, so it does not provide the lowest cost for truly archival, annual-access data.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Platform Overview
Key term
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a service that lets you save data on remote servers accessed over the internet instead of on your computer's hard drive.
Key term
Storage class
A storage class is a category of data storage that defines how data is stored, accessed, retrieved, and billed in a cloud environment.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This ACE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the ACE exam.