Google's Transfer Appliance
Google Cloud launched a new region in Los Angeles, outlined a network attached storage service and made its Transfer Appliance designed to move petabytes of data generally available.
The moves add up to an effort to target media companies and enterprises working with content creators.[1]
Google launched a service called Cloud Filestore[2] that can be handy for movie and production studios that have to render CGI images and move large files efficiently.
Cloud Filestore enables customers to stand up a managed network-attached storage (NAS) setup with Google Compute Engine and Kubernetes Engine instances. Filestore will be available as a storage option in the Google Cloud Platform console.
Dominic Preuss, director of product management at Google Cloud, said the expansion into LA was largely driven by customers that wanted a low latency place to run jobs and store data. Preuss noted that media and entertainment was among Google Cloud Platform's key verticals.
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Preuss explained that render farms are one of the primary use cases for Filestore. "If you are a studio or firm working on a piece that takes two or three years you need a last rendering for the effects," he said. "You may need 20,000 to 50,000 cores and don't want to own that infrastructure. You want to run jobs and give that capacity back."
Filestore will have a premium tier