Buckets & Objects

Buckets and objects are the two fundamental resources in Cloud Storage. A bucket is a container that holds objects, and an object is an immutable blob of data (a file) with associated metadata. Understanding how to create, configure, and manage buckets and objects is essential for effective use of Cloud Storage.

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Buckets

A bucket is a top-level container for objects. Every object must reside in a bucket.

Bucket Naming Rules

• Globally unique across all of GCP (not just your project)
• 3 to 63 characters, lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores
• Must start and end with a letter or number
• Cannot contain "goog" or misspellings of "google"
• Cannot be an IP address format

Bucket Location Types

Location Type	Example	Description
Region	europe-west2	Single data centre location — lowest latency, lowest cost
Dual-region	eur4 (Finland + Netherlands)	Two specific regions — higher availability
Multi-region	EU, US, ASIA	Multiple data centres across a large geographic area — highest availability

The location is set at bucket creation time and cannot be changed afterwards.