How can I keep objects stored in firebase cloud fu

Question

My application needs to build a couple of large hashmaps before processing a user's request. Ideally I want to store these hashmaps in-memory on the machine, which means it never has to do any expensive processing and can process any incoming requests quickly.

But this doesn't work for firebase because there's a chance a user triggers a new instance which sets off the very time-consuming preprocessing step.

So, I tried designing my application to use the firebase database, and get only the data it needs from the database each time instead of holding all the data in-memory. But, since the cloud functions are downloading loads of data from the database, I have now triggered over 1.7 GB in download for this month, just by myself from testing. This goes over the quota.

There must be something I'm missing; all I want is a permanent memory storage of some hashmaps. All I want is for those hashmaps to be ready by the time the function is called with a request. It seems like such a simple requirement; how come there is no way to do this?

Answer 1

If you want to store data in the container that runs your Cloud Functions, you can use its local tempfs, which is actually kept in memory. But this will disappear when the container is recycled, which happens when your function hasn't been access for a while. So this local file system will have to be rebuilt whenever the container spins up.

If you want permanent storage of values you generate, consider using Google Cloud Storage. It is probably a more cost effective option, and definitively the most scalable one.