title: Merging files in Google Cloud Storage using Google Cloud Dataflow
body: <p>Nathan Marz in his book "<a href="http://www.manning.com/marz/" rel="nofollow">Big Data</a>" describes how to maintain files of data in <a href="http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-project-dist/hadoop-hdfs/HdfsUserGuide.html" rel="nofollow">HDFS</a> and how to optimize files' sizes to be as near native HDFS block size as possible using his <a href="https://github.com/nathanmarz/dfs-datastores/blob/develop/dfs-datastores/src/main/java/com/backtype/hadoop/pail/Pail.java" rel="nofollow">Pail</a> library running on top of <a href="http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/MapReduceTutorial.html" rel="nofollow">Map Reduce</a>.</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Is it possible to achieve the same result in <a href="https://cloud.google.com/storage/" rel="nofollow">Google Cloud Storage</a>?</li>
  <li>Can I use <a href="https://cloud.google.com/dataflow/" rel="nofollow">Google Cloud Dataflow</a> instead of MapReduce for this purpose?</li>
  </ol>