Migrating Application Infrastructure to GCP: Cost-Effective Storage Allocation

Cost-Effective Storage Allocation

Question

You have been engaged by your client to lead the migration of their application infrastructure to GCP.

One of their current problems is that the on-premises high performance SAN is requiring frequent and expensive upgrades to keep up with the variety of workloads that are identified as follows: 20 TB of log archives retained for legal reasons; 500 GB of VM boot/data volumes and templates; 500 GB of image thumbnails; 200 GB of customer session state data that allows customers to restart sessions even if off-line for several days.

Which of the following best reflects your recommendations for a cost-effective storage allocation?

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

D.

The best option for cost-effective storage allocation would be option A: Local SSD for customer session state data. Lifecycle-managed Cloud Storage for log archives, thumbnails, and VM boot/data volumes.

Here's why:

  1. Customer session state data: This data needs to be stored in a high-performance storage solution to ensure that customers can quickly restart their sessions. Local SSDs provide high performance and low latency, making them an excellent choice for this workload.

  2. Log archives: Log archives do not require high performance or low latency. Lifecycle-managed Cloud Storage provides a cost-effective storage solution that can be optimized for infrequent access. This means that logs can be stored at a lower cost, while still being readily available when needed.

  3. Image thumbnails: Like log archives, image thumbnails do not require high performance or low latency. Lifecycle-managed Cloud Storage is a cost-effective storage solution that can be optimized for infrequent access.

  4. VM boot/data volumes: These volumes require fast read and write access, but they do not require the same level of performance as customer session state data. Lifecycle-managed Cloud Storage can be used to store these volumes, providing a cost-effective solution that can be optimized for infrequent access.

Option B is not recommended because Memcache backed by Cloud Datastore is not suitable for storing session state data. Memcache is a memory caching system, which means that data is lost when the cache is cleared. Cloud Datastore is a non-relational datastore that is optimized for scalability, not performance.

Option C is not recommended because Memcache backed by Cloud SQL is also not suitable for storing session state data. While Cloud SQL is a high-performance relational database, it is not designed to handle the high write throughput required for session state data.

Option D is not recommended because Persistent Disk SSD storage is not cost-effective for session state data. While it provides high performance and low latency, it is also more expensive than Local SSDs.

In conclusion, Option A: Local SSD for customer session state data. Lifecycle-managed Cloud Storage for log archives, thumbnails, and VM boot/data volumes, is the best option for cost-effective storage allocation.