AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that enables extended storage capability to your on-premises, and thus seamlessly extending storage capacity (to cloud) and be virtually unlimited.

 

Key Points for AWS Storage Gateway

  • Gateway extends your on-premise storage services to S3, S3 Glacier, S3 Glacier Deep Archive, EBS, AWS Backup, etc.
  • Storage has a highly-optimized and efficient data transfer mechanism, with bandwidth management and automated network resilience
  • You can leverage AWS services like CloudWatch, CloudTrail, IAM, KMS, etc., for monitoring, management and security.
  • Storage Gateway can be made available as a virtual machine (VM) or as a physical hardware applicance
    • Host Platform (for Gateway) can run on: VMWare ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V , Linux KVM, Amazon EC2, Hardware Appliance
  • Storage Gateways support these protocols – NFS, SMB, iSCSI, iSCSI-VTL
  • Cache – Gateways maintain cache (at on-premise) to enable low-latency access for your applications to data stored in AWS
    • Local cache can be up to 64 TB
  • Security – Gateways support end to end security of data between on-premise and AWS Cloud
    • Storage Gateway supports compliance for HIPAA, PCI, FIPS 140-2
  • Use Cases: backups in the (AWS) cloud, using on-premises file shares backed by cloud storage, low latency access to data in AWS for on-premise applications

 


Types of Storage Gateways

  • File Gateway
  • Tape Gateway
  • Volume Gateway
    • Cache Mode
    • Stored Mode

 

File Gateway

  • Store files as objects in Amazon S3, with a local cache for low-latency access to most recently used data
  • Protocols used – NFS and SMB
  • File Gateway publishes audit logs for SMB file share user operations to CloudWatch
  • Often used to migrate on-premise file data to S3

 

  • How File Gateway works:

File Gateway - How it Works

Image courtesy of AWS

 

Tape Gateway

  • Enables a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) consisting of virtual tape drives and a virtual media changer
  • Back up your data to Amazon S3 and archive in Amazon Glacier using your existing tape-based processes
  • Protocol used – iSCSI
  • Tape Gateway stores your virtual tapes in service-managed S3 buckets, and creates new virtual tapes automatically, thus simplifying management.
  • Tape Gateway supports key Backup Software like: Arcserve Backup, Bacula, Commvault, Dell EMC NetWorker, IBM Spectrum Protect, Micro Focus Data Protector, Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager, NovaStor DataCenter, Quest NetVault Backup, Veeam Backup & Replication, Veritas Backup Exec, Veritas NetBackup

 

  • How Tape Gateway works:

Tape Gateway - How it Works

Image courtesy of AWS

 

Volume Gateway

  • Enables Block storage volumes for your applications, which provides asynchronous backups via point-in-time EBS snapshots
  • Often used for DR based on EBS Snapshots, or Cached Volume Clones
  • Offered in two modes:
    • Cached Mode
    • Stored Mode

 

Volume Cached Mode – primary data is stored in S3, and frequently accessed data is kept locally in cache

Volume Gateway - Cached Mode

Image courtesy of AWS

 

Volume Stored Mode – primary data is stored locally and asynchronously backed up to AWS

Volume Gateway - Stored Mode

Image courtesy of AWS

 


Pricing

AWS Storage Gateway is billed for following components:

File Gateway

  • Storage – billed per S3 pricing
  • Requests
    • Data written to AWS Storage by Gateway – per GB
    • File storage in S3 – billed per S3 requests pricing
  • Data Transfer (Out) – per GB

 

Volume Gateway

  • Storage
    • Volume storage – per GB per month
    • Snapshots storage – billed per EBS Snapshots pricing
  • Requests
    • Data written to AWS Storage by Gateway – per GB
    • EBS Snapshot / Volume Deletes – free
  • Data Transfer (Out) – per GB

 

Tape Gateway

  • Storage
    • Virtual tape storage – per GB per month
    • Virtual tape storage (archived in S3 Glacier) – per GB per month
    • Virtual tape storage (archived in S3 Glacier Deep Archive) – per GB per month
  • Requests
    • Data written to AWS Storage by Gateway – per GB
    • Virtual tape retrieval – per GB
      • Price varies by underlying storage type – Glacier / Glacier Deep Archive
    • Virtual tape archival – free
  • Data Transfer (Out) – per GB

 

Hardware Appliances – by each Appliance

 


External Resources