Store a multi‑petabyte dataset that must be available 24/7 and is queried exclusively via SQL by analysts. Which storage optimizes ease of analysis?

BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse designed for petabyte-scale analytics. It natively supports SQL queries, making it ideal for analysts and ensuring 24/7 availability. Its architecture is optimized for analytical workloads, providing high performance for complex queries on massive datasets. Cloud SQL is a relational database service, suitable for transactional workloads, not petabyte-scale analytics. Storing flat files in Cloud Storage would require additional services (like Dataproc or Dataflow) to query effectively with SQL, adding complexity. Cloud Datastore (now Firestore in Datastore mode) is a NoSQL document database, not designed for SQL-based analytical queries on petabyte datasets.