Professional Data EngineerDesigning data processing systemsEasy
A global e-commerce company needs to store customer order history, which can grow to petabytes over time. This data is primarily accessed for historical reporting and infrequent ad-hoc analysis, but not for real-time transactions. The company wants to optimize storage costs while maintaining high availability. Which Google Cloud storage solution is most suitable for this use case?
- ACloud Storage (Standard class)
- BCloud SQL
- CBigQuery
- DCloud Bigtable
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. BigQuery
BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse designed for petabyte-scale data analysis. Its columnar storage and query optimization are ideal for historical reporting and ad-hoc analysis, offering excellent cost-effectiveness for large datasets that are not accessed for transactional purposes.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Cloud Storage (Standard class) is object storage, suitable for raw data, but BigQuery provides a managed analytical platform for structured data.
- B. Cloud SQL is a relational database, not optimized for petabyte-scale analytical workloads and can be expensive for such volumes.
- D. Cloud Bigtable is a NoSQL wide-column database for high-throughput, low-latency access, not primarily for cost-optimized historical reporting.
BigQuery for Petabyte-scale Data Warehousing
BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless, and highly scalable enterprise data warehouse that enables super-fast SQL queries using the processing power of Google's infrastructure.
- Optimized for analytical workloads (OLAP).
- Columnar storage for efficient query performance.
- Separates compute and storage for cost efficiency.
Memory trick: BigQuery is the 'Big Warehouse' for your analytical treasures.