AWS Storage Gateway and Snow Family

AWS Storage Gateway

AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that allows us to easily integrate our on-site IT environment and AWS’s storage infrastructure, allowing on-site applications to access AWS storage services.

Note: A hybrid cloud is a combination of a private cloud (on-site data centers) and one or more public clouds that remain distinct entities but are bound together to get the benefits of both.

When we deploy our applications on AWS, it’s straightforward to link them with AWS storage services such as S3, EBS, and File Gateways. However, if we want to take advantage of cloud storage in a hybrid cloud configuration, we use the Storage Gateway service.

Note: AWS Storage Gateway can be used as software or a dedicated hardware appliance in the on-site data center. The dedicated hardware for Storage Gateway is necessary for small data centers that don’t have spare capacity for the Storage Gateway software and hardware requirements.

AWS Storage Gateway has four storage solutions:

• Amazon FSx File Gateway
• Amazon S3 File Gateway
• Volume Gateway
• Tape Gateway

S3 File Gateway

S3 File Gateway is a service that provides a file interface to S3 object storage for on-site data centers. It allows on-site applications to store and retrieve files as objects in S3 and access them using standard file protocols such as Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB). It allows us to use S3 object storage as a file system while maintaining the scalability and durability of object storage.

The following illustration shows how a server in a corporate data center can connect to S3 via the S3 Storage Gateway. Note that the server only works with NFS and SMB protocols here, while the S3 Storage Gateway links the server to the S3 using an HTTPS connection, thereby using an object storage service, S3, as a file system ...