What is AWS Storage Gateway?
AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that gives you on-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage. Storage Gateway provides a standard set of storage protocols such as iSCSI, SMB, and NFS, which allow you to use AWS storage without rewriting your existing applications. It provides low-latency performance by caching frequently accessed data on premises, while storing data securely and durably in Amazon cloud storage services. Storage Gateway optimizes data transfer to AWS by sending only changed data and compressing data. Storage Gateway also integrates natively with Amazon S3 cloud storage which makes your data available for in cloud processing, AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM) for securing access management to services and resources, AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) for encrypting data at rest in cloud, Amazon CloudWatch for monitoring, and AWS CloudTrail for logging account activity.
- The File Gateway enables you to store and retrieve objects in Amazon S3 using file protocols such as Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB). Objects written through File Gateway can be directly accessed in S3.
- The Volume Gateway provides block storage to your on-premises applications using iSCSI connectivity. Data on the volumes is stored in Amazon S3 and you can take point in time copies of volumes which are stored in AWS as Amazon EBS snapshots. You can also take copies of volumes and manage their retention using AWS Backup. You can restore EBS snapshots to a Volume Gateway volume or an EBS volume.
- The Tape Gateway provides your backup application with an iSCSI virtual tape library (VTL) interface, consisting of a virtual media changer, virtual tape drives, and virtual tapes. Virtual tapes are stored in Amazon S3 and can be archived to Amazon S3 Glacier or Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
