Accessing an Ursa Major storage bucket

This guide shows how to upload, download and share files in a Google Cloud Storage bucket in your Ursa Major project, using the web console or the command line. To create a bucket first, see Creating an Ursa Major storage bucket.

Costs: Standard-class storage is Tier 2 and is recharged to a lab funding source under an MOU. Archive classes (such as Coldline) are Tier 1 under current terms, within limits. Downloading data out of Google Cloud, and reading data from archive classes, can carry charges. See KB005: Ursa Major service tiers and Ursa Major cloud storage.

Sensitive data: P3, P4 or regulated data needs a review before it is stored. See Security and Data.

Web console

Open the bucket

Go to the Google Cloud console and select your project (for example my-lab-project).
Open the navigation menu and select Cloud Storage, then Buckets.
Click the bucket name (for example my-lab-bucket). The Objects tab lists its files and folders.

Upload files

On the Objects tab, click Upload, then choose Upload files or Upload folder. You can also drag files onto the page.
Wait for the upload to finish. Progress shows at the bottom of the page.
Check that the files appear in the object list.

For large uploads (many files or many gigabytes), the command line is more reliable.

Download files

On the Objects tab, click the file name.
Click Download. The file is saved to your computer.

Cloud Storage shares access by granting a role to a person or group, not by sending a link. To give someone access to a bucket, including collaborators outside the project or outside UCR, send a request to research-computing@ucr.edu with the bucket name, the person's email address and whether they need read-only or read and write access. Research Computing grants the smallest role that does the job, and removes it when it is no longer needed. Buckets and objects are not made public.

Command line (gcloud)

Install the Google Cloud CLI, or use Cloud Shell in the console, which has it already.
Check the installation:
```
gcloud version
```

gcloud auth login
gcloud config set project my-lab-project

List the buckets in the project, and the contents of one bucket:
```
gcloud storage ls
gcloud storage ls gs://my-lab-bucket
```

Upload a file, or a whole folder:

gcloud storage cp myfile.txt gs://my-lab-bucket/
gcloud storage cp --recursive my-folder gs://my-lab-bucket/

Download a file:
```
gcloud storage cp gs://my-lab-bucket/myfile.txt ~/Downloads/
```
Replace my-lab-project, my-lab-bucket and the email address with your own values.

Other ways to connect

To mount a bucket as a folder on Linux, see Mounting Google Cloud Storage on Linux with rclone.
Google's guide: Discover object storage with the gcloud tool.
Questions: research-computing@ucr.edu.

Owner: Research Computing Reviewed: 4 Oct 2026