AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid service that enables organizations to extend their data storage and processing workloads to the cloud. This service offers a familiar and consistent interface for managing and moving data between on-premises environments and the AWS cloud. This allows organizations to leverage the scalability, durability, and cost-effectiveness of AWS for storage, backup, archiving, disaster recovery, data migration, edge processing, and more.
AWS Storage Gateway supports three types of gateways - File Gateway, Volume Gateway, and Tape Gateway - each designed for different use cases and application requirements.
File Gateway allows you to store and retrieve objects in Amazon S3 using industry standard file interfaces. This is useful for applications that need a file interface, such as NFS or SMB, to S3. File Gateway also supports S3 Intelligent-Tiering to optimize storage costs.
Volume Gateway provides block storage in the form of iSCSI volumes. This is useful for applications that require block storage but also need the durability, scalability, and economics of AWS. Volume Gateway supports two modes: caching and volume storage. In caching mode, your most frequently accessed data is kept locally while all data is stored in AWS. In volume storage mode, all your data is kept locally and asynchronous copies are stored in AWS for durability.
Tape Gateway offers a virtual tape (VTL) replacement for backup and archiving. This is useful for organizations looking to replace or supplement their existing tape operations with AWS cloud storage. Tape Gateway supports writing data to virtual tapes that are stored in Amazon S3 and can be archived in Amazon Glacier or Amazon Glacier Deep Archive.
AWS Storage Gateway is easy to set up and manage. You can deploy the service as a virtual appliance in your on-premises environment or as a dedicated hardware appliance for increased performance and capacity. The AWS Storage Gateway management interface is integrated into the AWS Management Console, so you can monitor and manage your storage resources from a single place. Additionally, AWS Storage Gateway provides integration with other AWS services such as Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for access control.
In terms of security, AWS Storage Gateway offers several layers of protection. Data in transit is encrypted using SSL, and data at rest is encrypted using keys managed by the AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Plus, you can configure AWS Storage Gateway to automatically back up your data to AWS, protecting it from loss or corruption.
In summary, the AWS Storage Gateway is a powerful and flexible solution for extending your data storage and processing workloads to the cloud. It offers the familiarity and consistency of a local storage interface, along with the scalability, durability, and cost efficiency of AWS. Whether it's backup, archiving, disaster recovery, data migration, data processing at the edge, or other use cases, the AWS Storage Gateway can help meet your cloud storage needs.
