Storage Insights datasets, now generally available on Google Cloud, add activity insights to help storage and platform admins understand how their Cloud Storage objects are accessed, moved, and modified. The feature provides object-level activity, bucket-level aggregate and regional traffic activity, and project-level aggregate activity — all surfaced as queryable BigQuery views. Three key use cases are covered with example SQL queries: right-sizing storage classes by identifying cold data, optimizing bucket placement by analyzing regional traffic patterns, and diagnosing operational errors like 429 rate-limit spikes. Data refreshes typically within four hours. A pre-configured Looker Studio dashboard template is available for quick visualization. Shipt used the feature to relocate 1.3 petabytes from multi-region to regional storage, achieving significant cost savings.
