AWS Storage Gateway FAQs

---

General

Q. What is the AWS Storage Gateway and what can I do with it?

The AWS Storage Gateway is a service connecting an on-premises software appliance with cloud-based storage to provide seamless and secure integration between an organization’s on-premises IT environment and AWS’s storage infrastructure. The service enables you to securely upload data to the AWS cloud for cost effective backup and rapid disaster recovery. The AWS Storage Gateway supports industry-standard storage protocols that work with your existing applications. It provides low-latency performance by maintaining data on your on-premises storage hardware while asynchronously uploading this data to AWS, where it is encrypted and securely stored in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Using the AWS Storage Gateway, you can back up point-in-time snapshots of your on-premises application data to Amazon S3 for future recovery. In the event you need replacement capacity for disaster recovery purposes, or if you want to leverage Amazon EC2’s on-demand compute capacity for additional capacity during peak periods, for new projects, or as a more cost-effective way to run your normal workloads, you can use the AWS Storage Gateway to mirror your on-premises data to Amazon EC2 instances.

Q. How does the AWS Storage Gateway work?

The AWS Storage Gateway’s software appliance is available for download as a virtual machine (VM) image that you install on a host in your datacenter. Once you’ve installed your gateway and associated it with your AWS Account through our activation process, you can use the AWS Management Console to create Gateway-Stored storage volumes up to 1 TB in size that can be mounted as iSCSI devices by your on-premises applications. Data written to your Gateway-Stored volumes is stored on your on-premises storage hardware, and asynchronously stored in Amazon S3 in the form of Amazon EBS snapshots. This provides your on-premises applications with low-latency access to their entire data sets, while providing durable, off-site backups.

While the beta currently supports Gateway-Stored volumes, we plan to support Gateway-Cached volumes in the coming months. Data written to your Gateway-Cached volumes will be stored in Amazon S3, with only a cache of recently written and frequently accessed data stored locally on your on-premises storage hardware. Gateway-Cached volumes will allow you to utilize Amazon S3 for data where higher retrieval latencies are acceptable, such as infrequently accessed data, while maintaining an on-premises storage cache for data where low-latency access is required. This will minimize the need to scale your on-premises storage infrastructure, while still providing your applications with low-latency access to their active data.

Q. How can I get started using the AWS Storage Gateway?

To get started, sign up for the AWS Storage Gateway by clicking the “Sign Up Now” button on the AWS Storage Gateway detail page. To sign-up, you must have an Amazon Web Services account; if you do not already have one, you will be prompted to create one when you begin the AWS Storage Gateway sign-up process. After you sign up, you can begin setting up and activating your gateway by visiting the AWS Management Console. To learn more, you can also refer to our Getting Started Video or Getting Started Documentation.

Q. Where does the AWS Storage Gateway store my data in AWS?

The AWS Storage Gateway uploads and stores your on-premises application data in Amazon S3 as Amazon EBS snapshots, providing a point-in-time backup that can be restored on-premises or used to instantiate new Amazon EBS volumes. Amazon S3 redundantly stores your data on multiple devices across multiple facilities in a Region. Once stored, Amazon S3 maintains the durability of your data by quickly detecting and repairing any lost redundancy. Amazon S3 is designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities.

Q. What are the minimum hardware requirements for the AWS Storage Gateway’s VM?

The AWS Storage Gateway VM must be installed on a host in your datacenter running supported versions of VMWare ESXi. The gateway VM must be deployed with these minimum resources:

• 4 Virtual Processors.
• 7.5GB of RAM.
• 75GB of disk space for .ova installation and system data.

The AWS Storage Gateway currently supports these versions of the Microsoft Windows and Red Hat iSCSI Software Initiators.

Q. How much data can I store per gateway? How many volumes can I create?

There is no limit to the amount of snapshot storage that a single gateway can upload to and store in Amazon S3. However, each gateway supports up to 12TBs of local storage and up to 12 storage volumes. If you need to store more data locally on your gateway, complete this request form and your use case and storage increase will be considered.

Q. What performance will I experience when using the AWS Storage Gateway?

As the AWS Storage Gateway VM sits between your application and underlying on-premises storage, the performance you experience will be dependent upon a number of factors, including the speed of your underlying local disks as well as the network bandwidth between your iSCSI initiator and gateway VM. Our technical documentation provides guidance on how to optimize your environment setup for best performance.

Q. Can I route my AWS Storage Gateway internet traffic through a local proxy server?

Yes, the AWS Storage Gateway supports the configuration of a SOCKS proxy between your gateway and AWS. You can specify an IP address and Port number for the host running your proxy, and the AWS Storage Gateway will route all HTTPS traffic through your proxy server.

Q. Can I use the AWS Storage Gateway with AWS Direct Connect?

The AWS Storage Gateway efficiently uses your internet bandwidth to speed up the backup of your on-premises application data to AWS. The AWS Storage Gateway only uploads data that has changed, minimizing the amount of data sent over the internet. You can also use AWS Direct Connect to further increase throughput and reduce your network costs by establishing a dedicated network connection between your on-premises gateway and AWS.

Q. Can I configure the AWS Storage Gateway via an API?

Yes, you can configure the AWS Storage Gateway via both an API as well as the AWS Management Console.

---

Billing

Q. How will I be billed for my use of the AWS Storage Gateway?

You are billed based on:

• Gateway usage (per activated gateway per month): You are billed a monthly fee for each of your gateways. This fee is prorated daily. Billing for a gateway begins upon activation and continues until you delete the gateway from the AWS Management Console.
• • Storage usage (per GB per month): You are billed for the snapshots your gateway stores in Amazon S3. These snapshots are stored and billed as Amazon EBS snapshots. Snapshots are incremental backups, reducing your storage charges. When taking a new snapshot, only the data that has changed since your last snapshot is stored. All snapshot storage is also compressed, further minimizing your storage charges.
• • Data transfer (per GB) – You are billed for internet data transfer for each GB downloaded from AWS to your gateway. All data transfer in is $0.00 per GB.

For detailed pricing information, please visit the pricing section on the AWS Storage Gateway detail page.

Q. Do your prices include taxes?

Except as otherwise noted, our prices are exclusive of applicable taxes and duties, including VAT and applicable sales tax.

---

Security

Q. Does the AWS Storage Gateway encrypt my data?

The AWS Storage Gateway encrypts all data in-transit to and from AWS via SSL. All data is encrypted at rest in Amazon S3 using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256, a secure symmetric-key encryption standard using 256-bit encryption keys. This encryption does not apply to any snapshot data you have stored from your Amazon EBS volumes.

Q. What form of iSCSI authentication does the AWS Storage Gateway support?

The AWS Storage Gateway supports authentication between your gateway and iSCSI initiators via CHAP (Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol).

---

Snapshots

Q. How do I restore a snapshot to my gateway?

Using the AWS Management Console, you can create a new gateway volume from a snapshot you’ve stored in Amazon S3. The AWS Storage Gateway will download the snapshot data from Amazon S3 to your gateway volume's disk. You can access this data by mounting your new gateway volume as an iSCSI device to your on-premises application server. New volumes created from existing snapshots load lazily in the background. Once you create a volume from a snapshot and mount it to your application server, your application can start accessing the volume and all of its data. If your application accesses a piece of data which hasn’t yet been restored to your on-premises disk from AWS, the volume will immediately download the requested data from Amazon S3, and will then continue downloading the rest of the volume’s data in the background.

Q. Can I access my snapshots from within AWS?

The AWS Storage Gateway stores your data in Amazon S3 as an EBS Snapshot. This allows you to easily mirror data from your on-premises applications to your applications running on Amazon EC2 in the event you require additional on-demand compute capacity for data processing or replacement capacity for disaster recovery purposes. You can easily access this data from Amazon EC2 by restoring these data snapshots to Amazon EBS volumes and attaching them to your Amazon EC2 instances.

Q. Are snapshots versioned? Can I read an older snapshot to do a point-in-time recovery?

Each snapshot is given a unique identifier which can be viewed using the AWS Management Console. You can create AWS Storage Gateway or Amazon EBS volumes based on any of your existing snapshots by specifying this unique identifier.

Q. Do the AWS Storage Gateway’s volumes need to be un-mounted in order to take a snapshot? Does the snapshot need to complete before the volume can be used again?

No, taking snapshots does not require you to un-mount your volumes, nor does it impact your application’s performance. However, snapshots only capture data that has been written to your AWS Storage Gateway volume, which may exclude any data that has been locally buffered by your application or OS.

Q. Can I schedule snapshots of my gateway’s storage volumes?

Yes, for each storage volume you create, the AWS Storage Gateway creates a snapshot schedule with a 24 hour frequency. You can modify both the time the snapshot occurs each day, as well as the frequency (every 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, or 24 hours).

Q. How long does it take to complete a snapshot?

The time it takes to complete a snapshot is largely dependent upon the size of your volume and the speed of your internet connection to AWS. In order to minimize the time required, the AWS Storage Gateway proactively uploads your data to Amazon S3 in advance of a snapshot. These proactive writes are temporarily buffered on-premises prior to being uploaded, using disks that you allocate as part of the initial setup process. The AWS Storage Gateway compresses all data prior to upload, further reducing the time to take a snapshot.

Q. Will I be able to access my snapshots using Amazon S3’s APIs?

No, snapshots are only accessible from the AWS Storage Gateway and Amazon EBS and cannot be directly accessed using Amazon S3 APIs.

---

Monitoring and Maintenance

Q. How do I monitor my gateway?

You can use Amazon CloudWatch to monitor the performance metrics for your AWS Storage Gateway volumes, giving you insight into bandwidth, throughput, and latency. These metrics are accessible from the AWS Management Console.

Q. Does the AWS Storage Gateway support bandwidth throttling?

Yes, using the AWS Management Console, you can restrict the bandwidth between your gateway and AWS based on a rate that you provide. You can specify individual rates for inbound and outbound traffic.

Q. How does the AWS Storage Gateway manage updates?

When configuring your gateway, you can specify a weekly maintenance schedule. This allows you to control when the AWS Storage Gateway service can deploy important updates and software patches to your local gateway. Updates should take only a few minutes to complete. Occasionally some updates may require a system restart.

---

Support

Q. Does AWS Premium Support cover the AWS Storage Gateway?

Yes, AWS Premium Support covers issues related to your use of the AWS Storage Gateway. Please see the AWS Premium Support detail page for further details and pricing.

Q: What other support options are available?

You can tap into the breadth of existing AWS community knowledge through the AWS Storage Gateway discussion forum.