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AWS Storage Gateway

Links: 101 AWS SAA Index

Introduction

  • It is bridge between your S3 and on premise data.
  • It is not possible to put everything on AWS due to compliance and other reasons so companies are moving to Hybrid cloud options.
  • Use cases: recovery, backup and restore
  • Different types of storage options
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  • There are 3 types of Storage Gateways: File, Volume and Tape.

File Gateway

  • Works with both windows and linux file shares.
Go for file gateway if see keywords like SMB/NFS, cache, AD authentication, file storage, POSIX compliant.

S3 file gateway

  • Configured S3 buckets are accessible using the SMB (FSx windows) and NFS(EFS) protocol.
  • Can be Integrated with Active Directory for User authentication.
  • Can be used with windows file servers.
  • Most recently used files are cached.
  • Can send to S3, S3 IA, S3 one zone IA and S3 intelligent tiering.
    • For glacier you will need lifecycle rules just like Snow devices.
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  • No EBS backup like in volume gateway.
S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive are NOT covered by S3 file gateway.

FSx file gateway

  • Main point is Local cache for frequently accessed data.
  • Everything is same as s3 file gateway expect for the fact that it has native access to Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
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  • Windows native compatibility (SMB, NTFS, Active Directory, etc)

Volume Gateway

  • Block storage using iSCSI protocol.

  • They are stored in S3, backed by EBS snapshots since EBS is the only block storage option apart from instance store.

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  • It is of two types stored and cached volumes.

    • Cached volumes: low latency access to most recent data
    • Stored volumes: entire dataset is on premise, scheduled backups to S3

Tape Gateway

  • Can directly send to S3 Glacier and S3 Deep Glacier.
  • Useful for companies that have backups using tapes.
  • Virtual Tape Library (VTL) backed by Amazon S3 and Glacier
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  • Back up data using existing tape-based processes (and iSCSI interface)
If question mentions backed by S3 Glacier, tape then always go for tape gateway.
Tape Gateway is the only way of transferring data stored in tapes to AWS. You cannot use DataSync since it uses SMB or NFS file types.

Summary

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Required hardware

Gateway has to run on corporate data centres.

  • But sometimes it is not possible so we can leverage storage gateway hardware appliance from AWS.

  • Works with File Gateway, Volume Gateway, Tape Gateway

  • Has the required CPU, memory, network, SSD cache resources

Last updated: 2023-03-05