Do you have backup tapes sitting in a local closet or some third party storage facility? If yes, I have some good news for you because you can no longer afford to let this data sit on a shelf and collect dust.
To help you stay competitive and make it easy to import your old data backups to the cloud, we’re introducing Offline Media Import/Export. This is a solution that allows you to load data into any Google Cloud Storage class (Standard, DRA and Google Cloud Storage Nearline) by sending your physical media — such as hard disk drives (HDDs), tapes and USB flash drives — to a third party service provider who uploads data on your behalf. Offline Media Import/Export is helpful if you’re limited to a slow, unreliable, or expensive Internet connection. It’s also a great complement to the newly released Google Cloud Storage Nearline, a simple, low-cost, fast-response storage service with quick data backup, retrieval and access.
Offline Media Import/Export is fast, simple and can include a chain-of-custody process.
It’s faster than doing it yourself: Popular business DSL plans feature download speeds that exceed 10Mbps (megabits per second). However, upload speeds generally top out at 1Mbps, with most plans providing just 768kbps (kilobits per second) for upload. This means that uploading a single terabyte (TB) of data will take more than 100 days! This also assumes that no one else is using the same network connection. With Offline Media Import/Export, this process can now be completed in days instead of months.
It’s simple: Save and encrypt your data to the media of your choice (hard drives, tapes, etc.) and ship them to the third party service provider through your preferred courier service.
It’s protected: The encrypted data will be uploaded to Google Cloud Storage using high speed infrastructure. Third party service providers like Iron Mountain can offer a chain-of-custody process for your data. Once data upload is complete,  Iron Mountain can send the hard drive back to you, store it within their vault or destroy it. Google Cloud Storage customers in EMEA or APAC can sign up with Prime Focus Technologies to import data via physical media.

Get Started!
More information can be found on the “Offline Media Import / Export” webpage.

- Posted by Ben Chong, Product Manager