Storage Transfer Service accesses your data in S3-compatible storage using transfer agents deployed on VMs close to the data source. These agents run in a Docker container and belong to an agent pool, which is a collection of agents using the same configuration and that collectively move your data in parallel.

This feature allows you to migrate from on-premise or cloud object storage to Cloud Storage, archive data to free up on-premises storage capacity, replicate data to Google Cloud for business continuity, or transfer data to Google Cloud for analysis and processing. For customers migrating from AWS S3 to Cloud Storage, this feature gives an option to control network routes to Google Cloud, resulting in considerably lower outbound data transfer charges.