Cloud Digital Leader Google Cloud Products and Services Practice Question
An organization needs to store archival data that must be retained for 10 years and is accessed less than once a year. Which Cloud Storage class offers the lowest storage cost?
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 is the lowest-cost storage class for long-term retention, with a 365-day minimum storage duration and higher retrieval costs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Archive
Why this is correct
Archive is the correct storage class because it is the lowest-cost option for long-term retention, designed specifically for data accessed less than once per year. It enforces a 365-day minimum storage duration, which aligns with archival retention needs where retrieval is rare and latency is acceptable. Its pricing model minimizes storage cost at the expense of higher retrieval fees, making it the most economical choice for compliance or forensic archives.
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Standard
Why it's wrong here
Standard is incorrect because it is optimized for frequently accessed 'hot' data, such as active databases or files undergoing real-time processing. While it has no minimum storage duration and offers instant retrieval, its per-GB storage price is significantly higher than Archive, making it cost-prohibitive for archival data that must be retained for years without being accessed. Using Standard for this purpose would inflate storage costs without providing any benefit.
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Coldline
Why it's wrong here
Coldline is incorrect because it is priced for data accessed less than once per quarter, with a 90-day minimum storage duration, but its storage cost is still higher than Archive. It is intended for data that, while not frequently accessed, might be needed on a semi-regular basis—like disaster recovery backup—where retrieval latency of seconds is required. For true archival data, paying the Coldline premium for access that may never occur does not make financial sense.
- ✗
Nearline
Why it's wrong here
Nearline is incorrect because it targets data accessed less than once per month, with a 30-day minimum storage duration, and is the second most expensive storage class after Standard. It is designed for workloads requiring low latency retrieval, such as file shares or media backups, where data is pulled occasionally but not rarely. Archival data to be kept for long compliance periods would incur unnecessarily high costs with Nearline, as the retrieval frequency is far below once a month.
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
Cloud Digital Transformation
Key term
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
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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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This GCDL 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 GCDL exam.