AWS Storage Gateway
Storage Gateway is a hybrid storage virtual appliance. It can run in three different modes – File Gateway, Tape Gateway, and Volume Gateway. It can be used for the extension, migration, and backups of an on-premises data center to AWS:
- In Tape Gateway mode, Storage Gateway stores virtual tapes on S3, and when ejected and archived, the tapes are moved from S3 to Glacier. Active tapes are stored in S3 for storage and retrieval. Archived or exported tapes are stored in Virtual Tape Shelf (VTS) in Glacier. Virtual tapes can be created and can range in size from 100 GiB to 5 TiB. A total of 1 petabyte of storage can be configured locally and an unlimited number of tapes can be archived to Glacier. This is ideal for an existing backup system on tape and where there is a need to migrate backup data into AWS. You can decommission the physical tape hardware later.
- In File Gateway mode, Storage Gateway maps files onto S3 objects, which can be stored using one of the available storage classes. This helps you to extend the data center into AWS. You can load more files to your file gateway and these are stored as S3 objects. It can run on your on-premises virtual server, which connects to various devices using Server Message Block (SMB) or Network File System (NFS). File Gateway connects to AWS using an HTTPS public endpoint to store the data on S3 objects. Life cycle policies can be applied to those S3 objects. You can easily integrate your Active Directory (AD) with File Gateway to control access to the files on the file share.
- In Volume Gateway mode, the storage gateway presents block storage. There are two ways of using this; one is Gateway Cached and the other is Gateway Stored:
- Gateway Stored is a volume storage gateway running locally on-premises. It has local storage and an upload buffer. A total of 32 volumes can be created, and each volume can be up to 16 TB in size for a total capacity of 512 TB. Primary data is stored on-premises and backup data is asynchronously replicated to AWS in the background. Volumes are made available via Internet Small Computer Systems Interface (iSCSI) for network-based servers to access. It connects to a Storage Gateway endpoint via an HTTPS public endpoint and creates EBS snapshots from backup data. These snapshots can be used to create standard EBS volumes. This option is ideal for migration to AWS, disaster recovery, or business continuity. The local system will still use the local volume, but the EBS snapshots are in AWS, which can be used instead of backups. It’s not the best option for data center extensions because you require a huge amount of local storage.
- Gateway Cached is a volume storage gateway running locally on-premises. It has cache storage and an upload buffer. The difference is that the data that is added to Storage Gateway is not local but uploaded to AWS. Primary data is stored in AWS. Frequently accessed data is cached locally. This is an ideal option for extending an on-premises data center to AWS. It connects to a Storage Gateway endpoint via an HTTPS public endpoint and creates S3-backed volume (AWS-managed bucket) snapshots that are stored as standard EBS snapshots.
