Transfer Appliance

Rack, capture and then ship your data to Google Cloud

Offline data transfers

Transfer Appliance is a secure, rackable high capacity storage server that you set up in your datacenter. You fill it with data and ship it to an ingest location where the data is uploaded to Google Cloud Storage. Your data is encrypted automatically, and remains safe until you decrypt it. Choose from 100TB or 480TB of raw capacity per appliance to move your data to Google Cloud quickly.

100TB Version

100TB version

480TB Version

480TB version

How it works

Step 1

Request a Transfer Appliance

Submit a request online. We will work with you on an appropriate size and number.

Step 2

Receive the appliance

The appliance is shipped via common carriers in a tamper-evident case.

Step 3

Fill appliance with up to a PB of data

Rack appliance in your datacenter and connect to a network. Capture data. It's encrypted.

Step 4

Ship the appliance back to Google

Use the provided return label and ship the appliance back to Google.

Step 5

Google uploads data to Cloud

Google will notify you when your data is ready.

Step 6

Access and place your data

Log into your console to decrypt your data and choose a storage bucket.

Step 7

Google securely erases the appliance

Google erases the appliance to NIST-800-88 standards.

Transfer Appliance use case

Data Collection

Many organizations rely on data in order to conduct their business, collecting significant amounts of geographic, environmental medical or financial data for analysis. If you need to transfer data from researchers, vendors or other sites to Google Cloud, Transfer Appliance can move that data for you. Once transferred to Google Cloud Storage or BigQuery your data is accessible via our Google Cloud Dataflow processing service for machine learning projects. Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine is a managed service that enables you to easily build machine learning models, that work on any type of data, of any size.

Data Replication

Many Google Cloud customers are looking to take advantage of hybrid architectures, supporting current operations with existing on-premises infrastructure but experimenting with the cloud. By transferring a copy of your data to Google Cloud you can decommission duplicate datasets, test cloud infrastructure and expose your data to machine learning and analysis.

Data Migration

Offline data transfer is suited for moving large amounts of existing backup images and archives to ultra low-cost, highly-durable and highly available archival storage offered through Google’s Nearline and Coldline storage classes. For other structured and unstructured data sets, whether they are small and frequently accessed or huge and rarely referenced, Google offers solutions like Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery or Dataproc to store and analyze that data.

Features

Simple data transfers at enterprise scale

Fast
Moving large amounts of data securely with Transfer Appliance can be significantly faster than uploading that data over the network. You can move up to a petabyte of data on a single Transfer Appliance more than 1000 days faster than with a 100Mbps connection.
Scalable
Capture up to a petabyte of data on one Transfer Appliance. Or use multiple appliances to transfer more data. All without impacting your outbound network.
Familiar
The Transfer Appliance is easily mounted into open rackspace in your datacenter and can be mounted as Network Attached Storage (NAS). A simple user interface will guide you through local data capture, and your Google Cloud Platform console will guide you through decryption and ingestion.
Secure
We use tamper-evident seals on shipping cases to and from your data ingest site. Data is encrypted to AES256 standard at the moment of capture and you decrypt your own data once as it is ingested into its final storage bucket. Once the transfer is complete the appliance is erased per NIST-800-88 standards.
Other ways to transfer data

“ Google Transfer Appliance moves petabytes of environmental and geographic data for Makani so we can find out where the wind is the most windy. ”

— Ruth Marsh Technical Program Manager at Makani

Transfer Appliance pricing

First, you pay a usage fee for each appliance option, which includes a certain number of free days of onsite usage, 10 days for 100 TB and 25 days for 480 TB.

Second, you pay shipping costs for the appliance based on the standard carrier rates for your location and the shipping option you choose. Shipping costs are important considerations as shipping one 480Tb appliance is typically 70% cheaper than shipping five 100Tb appliances. Google will work with you to choose the best option based on your needs.

Third, if the appliance is kept for longer than the allotted free days, you incur a late fee.

And finally, you pay no data ingest fees into Google Cloud Storage. Once in Google Cloud Storage, you will pay the associated monthly storage and operations costs for your stored data.

Transfer Appliance option Usage Fee Free days of onsite usage Late fee per day, beyond allotment Typical 2-day shipping fee
100 TB $300 10 $30 $500
480 TB $1800 25 $90 $900