Bucket locations

This page explains the concept of bucket location and the different locations where you can create buckets. A bucket's location defines the physical place where object data in the bucket resides.

To learn how to set the location for your bucket, see Create buckets.

Key concepts

• You permanently set a geographic location for storing your object data when you create a bucket.

  • You cannot change a bucket's location after it's created, but you can move your data to a bucket in a different location.

• You can select from the following location types:

  • A region is a specific geographic place, such as São Paulo.

  • A dual-region is a specific pair of regions, such as Tokyo and Osaka.

    • Dual-region pairings can be predefined or configurable.

  • A multi-region is a large geographic area, such as the United States, that contains two or more geographic places.

• The location type determines how your data is replicated and priced.

• Cloud Storage stores object data in the selected location in accordance with the Service Specific Terms.

• The location information for a bucket is part of the bucket's metadata, which you can view if you have permission to do so.

Location considerations

When you choose the location for a Cloud Storage bucket, consider the differences in availability, and price, as shown in the following table.

Location recommendations

• To maximize performance and lower your total cost of ownership, co-locate your data and compute in the same region(s). Regions and dual-regions are both suitable for this purpose.
• To avoid data replication charges, store short-lived datasets in regions.

• For moderate performance and ad hoc analytics workloads, multi-region storage can be a cost-effective choice.

• See the data storage pricing table for storage costs in each location.

Compute Engine VM notes

• Storing data in the same region as your Compute Engine VM instances can provide better performance. This advantage applies to both regions and dual-regions.
• While you can't specify a Compute Engine zone as a bucket location, all Compute Engine VM instances in zones within a given region have similar performance when accessing buckets in that region.

Available locations

The following sections list the Cloud Storage locations available for storing your data.

Regions

Geographic Area	Region Name	Region Description
North America
	NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST1	Montréal	Low CO2
	NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST2	Toronto	Low CO2
	NORTHAMERICA-SOUTH1	Querétaro
	US-CENTRAL1	Iowa	Low CO2
	US-EAST1	South Carolina
	US-EAST4	Northern Virginia
	US-EAST5	Columbus
	US-SOUTH1	Dallas	Low CO2
	US-WEST1	Oregon	Low CO2
	US-WEST2	Los Angeles
	US-WEST3	Salt Lake City
	US-WEST4	Las Vegas
South America
	SOUTHAMERICA-EAST1	São Paulo	Low CO2
	SOUTHAMERICA-WEST1	Santiago	Low CO2
Europe
	EUROPE-CENTRAL2	Warsaw
	EUROPE-NORTH1	Finland	Low CO2
	EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1	Madrid	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST1	Belgium	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST2	London	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST3	Frankfurt	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST4	Netherlands	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST6	Zürich	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST8	Milan
	EUROPE-WEST9	Paris	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST10	Berlin	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST12	Turin
Asia
	ASIA-EAST1	Taiwan
	ASIA-EAST2	Hong Kong
	ASIA-NORTHEAST1	Tokyo
	ASIA-NORTHEAST2	Osaka
	ASIA-NORTHEAST3	Seoul
	ASIA-SOUTHEAST1	Singapore
India
	ASIA-SOUTH1	Mumbai
	ASIA-SOUTH2	Delhi
Indonesia
	ASIA-SOUTHEAST2	Jakarta
Middle East
	ME-CENTRAL1	Doha
	ME-CENTRAL2	Dammam, Saudi Arabia
	ME-WEST1	Tel Aviv
Australia
	AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST1	Sydney
	AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST2	Melbourne
Africa
	AFRICA-SOUTH1	Johannesburg

Dual-regions

Objects stored in dual-region buckets are replicated so that they are stored in each region that make up the dual-region. The time it takes an object to be replicated between the two regions is determined by the bucket's replication setting.

There are two types of dual-regions supported in Cloud Storage.

• A predefined dual-region is identified by a unique location code and represents two specific regions. For example, NAM4 is the location code for the predefined dual-region consisting of US-CENTRAL1 and US-EAST1.

• A configurable dual-region is identified by the location code of the geographical area in which the dual-region resides and a placement configuration in which you specify a pair of regions. For example, you could create a configurable dual-region that has a location code of EU and a placement configuration consisting of EU-CENTRAL2 and EU-WEST1.

If the regions you want to pair are not available as a dual-region, consider creating a separate bucket in each region and using Storage Transfer Service Event-driven transfers to keep the buckets in sync.

Configurable dual-regions

When creating a bucket in a configurable dual-region, the pair of regions that you use to make the dual-region must use the same location code. This code is set for the LOCATION of the bucket and is also the location you specify when using customer-managed encryption keys or the resource locations constraint with such dual-region buckets.

The following regions are available when creating a configurable dual-region bucket:

¹The EUROPE-NORTH1 and EUROPE-WEST4 dual-region pairing is only available as a predefined dual-region.

²The US-CENTRAL1 and US-EAST1 dual-region pairing is only available as a predefined dual-region.

³US-EAST5 must be paired with either US-CENTRAL1 or US-EAST1.

Attempting to create a bucket using an invalid pairing, such as regions with different location codes, returns an error.

Predefined dual-regions

When creating a bucket in a predefined dual-region, you use a location code that uniquely identifies the pair of regions, in the same way you create buckets in regions and multi-regions. This location code is what you specify when using customer-managed encryption keys or the resource locations constraint with such dual-region buckets.

The following options are available when creating a bucket in a predefined dual-region:

Multi-regions

^* Object data added to a bucket in the EU multi-region is not stored in the EUROPE-WEST2 (London) or EUROPE-WEST6 (Zürich) regions.

What's next

• Create a bucket.
• Get the location for an existing bucket by viewing the bucket's metadata.
• Learn more about availability and durability in Cloud Storage.
• View all the Google Cloud services available in locations worldwide.
• Explore additional location-based concepts, such as zones, that apply to other Google Cloud services.