Google Cloud Platform gets new storage options, 20% price cut, more European datacenter support

Google on Monday announced new Cloud Platform features, including new storage and compute capabilities, lower prices, and more European Datacenter support. The news comes just under three weeks after the company gave its Cloud SQL service a big update.

First off, let’s look at the lower storage prices, since everyone likes to pay less. Google says it has reduced the price of standard Google Cloud Storage “by over 20 percent.” It has also introduced a limited preview of Durable Reduced Availability (DRA) storage, which provides a cheaper storage option by letting you trade off some data availability while still offering the durability your storage demands.

The new prices will be effective as of December 1. You can check out the details for yourself over at Google Cloud Storage Pricing, or just take a peek at the chart we’ve included for you:

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Following the addition of European datacenter support for Cloud SQL, Google has now extended it to customers using Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, Google Cloud SQL. and (soon) Google Compute Engine. The company wouldn’t say what “soon” meant, but we’ll let you know if adnd when we find out more.

The additional support means that if you want, you can now deploy your applications, data, and virtual machines to datacenters in Europe in addition to the US. This should translate to faster performance and international redundancy if your customers are closer to one continent than the other.

Google has also announced 36 additional instance types. In the coming weeks, the following three types will be added:

• High Memory Instance – High performance instances tailored for applications that demand large amounts of memory.
• High CPU Instance – Reduced cost option when applications don’t require as much memory.
• Diskless Configurations – Lower cost options for applications that do not require ephemeral disk and can exclusively utilize persistent disk.

Last but not least, Google has introduced Object Versioning and Persistent Disk Snapshotting. As you might expect, the former lets you automatically keep a history of old versions of your data, which should help you when you or an application error deletes or overwrites something by mistake. The latter meanwhile simplifies the process of creating a backup of your disk, moving it around Google datacenters, and using the snapshot to start up a new VM.

Image credit: Enzo Forciniti