What is Google Cloud?
Google Cloud Platform, offered by Google, is a suite of cloud computing services that run on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search and YouTube. Alongside a set of management tools, it provides a series of modular cloud services including computing, data storage, data analytics and machine learning.
Google Cloud Platform is useful for any WordPress owners to combine it with their WordPress Cloud Backup process. You can store each of your recurrent WordPress files backup and each of WordPress DB backup archive in your own cloud, inside your Google Cloud account.
Why use Google?
FREE plan
Any CLOUD STORAGE Google account has 5 GB of Regional Storage per month (US Regions Only - Excluding North Virginia). 5000 Class A Operations per month + 50000 Class B Operations per month + 1 GB network egress from North America to all-region destinations per month (excluding China and Australia).
Safe, Secure, and Tailored Backups: Automated solutions, stored in your own Hosted Private Cloud.
Google CLOUD STORAGE Price
Google directly markets the cost savings compared with Amazon. STORAGE BACKEND 53% Savings! A web-scale Cassandra storage backend running on local SSD. Google CLOUD STORAGE Price: $1,758/month Compare with AWS at $3744. GCP also has 80% more IOPS.
Cost Estimation Calculator
Since, the price is in GB, each month, it a bit hard to understand the advantage. Let's take "big WordPress customer" and do an estimative calculation. Assume a database big enough to have a 1GB archive file PLUS 100 GB of files under the hood, inside WordPress. Hourly DB backups and daily full backup is an extreme approach, but let's crunch the numbers. Database: 1GB X 24 hours X 31 days = 744 GB/month. Files: 100GB X 31 days = 3100 GB/month. Both would be 3844 GB/month. Total Estimated Cost of Cloud Storage Nearline (typically used for backups and media repositories): $38.44 from Belgium OR $61.50 from London / Frankfurt per 1 month for Cloud Storage space.
Now, let's consider, that we don't need ALL the existing backups, just the last 7 from each (database and files). This means we need to delete existing archive files when we have old unwanted ones. Database: keep only last seven backups for each last 7 days (not the last 7 from last day), and delete the rest. Crunching the numbers for database: 744 GB/month - last 7GB = 737 GB/month. Same logic for files: 3100 GB/month - 700 GB = 2400 GB/month. Both would be 3137 GB/month. Total Estimated Cost of Cloud Storage Nearline (typically used for backups and media repositories): $31.37 from Belgium OR $50.19 from London / Frankfurt per 1 month for Cloud Storage space.
Now, let's consider, that somebody will crash the hosting server and erase everything, weekly. Then, you need to restore everything, weekly. If this happens to you, then consider switching immediately to owl power, as this is a borderline crazy scenario! Restoring would mean to download 5 times in a month a single database archive and a single file archive; always the last one, right before the server crash. Crunching the numbers for database: 1GB X 5 times = 5 GB/month PLUS for the files: 100 GB X 5 times = 500 GB/month would add up to a 505 GB extra Download cost. Your previous bill will jump from previous amounts to a whopping $5.05 just for Cloud Storage Nearline restore (same price from Belgium / London / Frankfurt), as extra Cost.
Total Cost for 1 Month is $36.42 from Belgium, OR $55.24 from London / Frankfurt, at the end of this scenario. Still pretty decent, right?
* The estimated fees provided by Google Cloud Platform Pricing Calculator are for discussion purposes only and are not binding on either you or Google. Your actual fees may be higher or lower than the estimate.
Secure Data Storage: Managed Restore process, exactly when you need it!
