Google Cloud Storage Coldline: Changing Storage Class before Retrieval

Question

I am currently using Google Cloud Platform's Nearline Storage Class. I am interested in using the Coldline Storage Class.

I understand that Coldline storage has much higher data retrieval costs, at $0.05 per gigabyte, compared to $0.01 for Nearline.

However, I understand that we can change storage classes for objects with the rewrite command. The rewrite command is a Class A operation at $0.10 per 10,000 objects. However, is a rewrite command considered data retrieval? It does not explicitly say that in the manual. But unless it is, it seems we can always get away from paying data retrieval costs if we rewrite the object into a hotter storage class and then retrieve it.

Does anyone know the answer to this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, rewrite (and clone) requires accessing the object data and therefore incurs data retrieval costs.

I'll see if we can get the docs clarified to cover this.