This page explains the concept ofbucket location and the differentlocations where you can create buckets. A bucket's location defines thephysical place where object data in the bucket resides.

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

Key concepts

• You set ageographic location for storing yourobject data when you create a bucket.

  • You canrelocate a bucket after it's created ormove your data to a bucket in a different location. Note thatbucket relocation is available only if you've configuredStorage Intelligence.

• You can select from the following location types:

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

  • Adual-region is a specific pair of regions, such as Tokyo andOsaka.

    • Dual-region pairings can bepredefined orconfigurable.

  • Amulti-region is a large geographic area that contains two or more geographic regions, such as theUnited States.

• The location type determines how your data isreplicated andpriced.

• Cloud Storage stores object data in the selected location inaccordance with theService Specific Terms.

• The location information for a bucket is part of the bucket'smetadata,which you canview if you have permission to do so.

Location considerations

When you choose the location for a Cloud Storage bucket, consider thedifferences in availability, and price, as shown in the followingtable.

	Region	Dual-region	Multi-region
Availability	Data redundancy across availability zones (synchronous) RTO(recovery time objective)=0: automated failover and failback on zonal failure (no need to change storage paths)	Higher availability than regions for a given storage class Data redundancy across regions (asynchronous) Turbo replication option for replication within 15 minutes RTO(recovery time objective)=0: automated failover and failback on regional failure (no need to change storage paths)	Higher availability than regions for a given storage class Data redundancy across regions (asynchronous) RTO(recovery time objective)=0: automated failover and failback on regional failure (no need to change storage paths)
Pricing	Lowest storage price No replication charges No outbound data transfer charges when reading data inside the same region	Highest storage price Replication charges apply on write No outbound data transfer charges when reading data within either region	Higher storage price than regions, but lower than dual-regions Replication charges apply on write Outbound data transfer charges always apply when reading data

Location recommendations

Requirements	Recommended bucket location	Workload examples
Optimized latency and bandwidth Lowest data storage cost Cross-zone redundancy	Region1	Analytics Backup and archive
Optimized latency and bandwidth Cross-region redundancy, with precise control of the locations where copies of data are stored	Dual-region2	Analytics Backup and archive Disaster recovery
Cross-geography data access Cross-region redundancy	Multi-region	Content serving

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

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

  Note that the performance of workloads that use data in a multi-region bucketmight vary over time because storage and compute aren't colocated. When amulti-region workload has strict performance requirements, consider enablingAnywhere Cache.

• See thedata storage pricing table for storage costs in each location.

Compute Engine VM notes

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

Available locations

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

Regions

Geographic Area	Region Name	Region Description
North America
	NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST11	Montréal	Low CO2
	NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST2	Toronto	Low CO2
	NORTHAMERICA-SOUTH11	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-NORTH2	Stockholm	Low CO2
	EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1	Madrid	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST1	Belgium	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST2	London	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST3	Frankfurt
	EUROPE-WEST4	Netherlands	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST6	Zürich	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST8	Milan
	EUROPE-WEST9	Paris	Low CO2
	EUROPE-WEST10	Berlin
	EUROPE-WEST12	Turin
Asia
	ASIA-EAST1	Taiwan
	ASIA-EAST2	Hong Kong
	ASIA-NORTHEAST1	Tokyo
	ASIA-NORTHEAST21	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

¹Montréal, Osaka, and Querétaro each have three zones housed in oneor two physical data centers. In the rare event of a disaster, data stored inthese regions can be lost. To avoid this, you might want to consider using adual-region or backing up business-critical data to asecond region usingStorage Transfer Service for increased data protection.

Dual-regions

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

The following types of dual-regions are supported in Cloud Storage:

• Apredefined dual-region is identified by a unique location code andrepresents two specific regions. For example,NAM4 is the location code forthe predefined dual-region consisting ofUS-CENTRAL1 andUS-EAST1.

• Aconfigurable dual-region is identified by the location code of thegeographical area in which the dual-region resides and a placementconfiguration in which you specify a pair of regions. For example, you couldcreate a configurable dual-region that has a location code ofEU anda placement configuration consisting ofEU-CENTRAL2 andEU-WEST1.

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

Configurable dual-regions

Whencreating a bucket in a configurable dual-region, the pair of regionsthat you use to make the dual-region must use the same location code. This codeis set for theLOCATION of the bucket and is also the location you specifywhen usingcustomer-managed encryption keys or theresource locations constraint with such dual-region buckets.

Note: Unlike buckets in other locations, which billstorage usage againstthe SKUs associated with their location code, buckets in configurabledual-regions bill storage usage against SKUs in both of their underlyingregions.

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

Location code	Region Name	Region Description
ASIA
	ASIA-EAST1	Taiwan
	ASIA-SOUTHEAST1	Singapore
AU
	AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST1	Sydney
	AUSTRALIA-SOUTHEAST2	Melbourne
CA
	NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST1	Montréal
	NORTHAMERICA-NORTHEAST2	Toronto
DE
	EUROPE-WEST3	Frankfurt
	EUROPE-WEST10	Berlin
EU
	EUROPE-CENTRAL2	Warsaw
	EUROPE-NORTH11	Finland
	EUROPE-SOUTHWEST1	Madrid
	EUROPE-WEST1	Belgium
	EUROPE-WEST35	Frankfurt
	EUROPE-WEST41	Netherlands
	EUROPE-WEST84	Milan
	EUROPE-WEST9	Paris
	EUROPE-WEST105	Berlin
	EUROPE-WEST124	Turin
IN
	ASIA-SOUTH1	Mumbai
	ASIA-SOUTH2	Delhi
IT
	EUROPE-WEST8	Milan
	EUROPE-WEST12	Turin
US
	US-CENTRAL12	Iowa
	US-EAST12	South Carolina
	US-EAST4	Northern Virginia
	US-EAST53	Columbus
	US-SOUTH1	Dallas
	US-WEST1	Oregon
	US-WEST2	Los Angeles
	US-WEST3	Salt Lake City
	US-WEST4	Las Vegas

¹TheEUROPE-NORTH1 andEUROPE-WEST4 dual-region pairing is onlyavailable as apredefined dual-region.

²TheUS-CENTRAL1 andUS-EAST1 dual-region pairing is onlyavailable as apredefined dual-region.

³US-EAST5 must be paired with eitherUS-CENTRAL1 orUS-EAST1.

⁴ When pairingEUROPE-WEST8 andEUROPE-WEST12,use theIT multi-region code.

⁵ When pairingEUROPE-WEST3 andEUROPE-WEST10, use theDEmulti-region code.

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

Predefined dual-regions

Whencreating a bucket in a predefined dual-region, you use alocation code that uniquely identifies the pair of regions, in the same way youcreate buckets in regions and multi-regions. This location code is what youspecify when usingcustomer-managed encryption keys or theresource locations constraint with such dual-region buckets.

Note: Some tools present all dual-regions as if they were configurabledual-regions during bucket creation. For example, when creating a bucket ina dual-region using the Google Cloud console, you always select the individualregions that are part of the dual-region. If a predefined dual-region exists forthat pair, that predefined dual-region is used. Otherwise, a configurabledual-region is created. Once created, the Google Cloud console displays thecorrect location for that bucket, making it clear if a predefined dual-regionwas created.

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

Predefined dual-region name	Region Name	Region Description
ASIA1	ASIA-NORTHEAST1 +ASIA-NORTHEAST2	Tokyo + Osaka
EUR4	EUROPE-NORTH1 +EUROPE-WEST4	Finland + Netherlands
EUR5	EUROPE-WEST1 +EUROPE-WEST2	Belgium + London
EUR7	EUROPE-WEST2 +EUROPE-WEST3	London + Frankfurt
EUR8	EUROPE-WEST3 +EUROPE-WEST6	Frankfurt + Zürich
NAM4	US-CENTRAL1 +US-EAST1	Iowa + South Carolina

Multi-regions

Multi-Region Name	Multi-Region Description
ASIA	Data centers in Asia, excluding Hong Kong and Indonesia
EU	Data centers withinmember states of the European Union*
US	Data centers in the United States

^* Object data added to a bucket in theEU multi-region is notstored in theEUROPE-WEST2 (London) orEUROPE-WEST6 (Zürich) regions.

What's next

• Create a bucket.
• Get the location for an existing bucket byviewing the bucket's metadata.
• Learn more aboutavailability and durability in Cloud Storage.
• View all theGoogle Cloud services available in locations worldwide.
• Explore additional location-based concepts, such as zones, that applyto other Google Cloud services.

Try it for yourself

If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how Cloud Storage performs in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

Try Cloud Storage free