AWS Storage Gateway

• AWS Storage Gateway connects on-premises software appliances with cloud-based storage to provide seamless integration with data security features between on-premises and the AWS storage infrastructure.
• AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that gives you on-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage.
• Storage Gateway allows storage of data in the AWS cloud for scalable and cost-effective storage while maintaining data security.
• Storage Gateway can run either on-premises, as a VM appliance (on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Linux KVM), or in AWS, as an EC2 instance. So if the on-premises data center goes offline and there is no available host, the gateway can be deployed on an EC2 instance.
• Gateways hosted on EC2 instances can be used for disaster recovery, data mirroring, and providing storage for applications hosted on EC2.
• Storage Gateway, by default, uploads data using SSL and provides data encryption at rest when stored in S3 or Glacier using AES-256.
• Storage Gateway performs encryption of data-in-transit and at-rest.
• Storage Gateway supports four key hybrid cloud use cases:
  • Move backups and archives to the cloud
  • Reduce on-premises storage with cloud-backed file shares
  • Provide on-premises applications low-latency access to data stored in AWS
  • Data lake access for pre and post processing workflows
• Storage Gateway offers multiple types:
  • Amazon S3 File Gateway
  • Amazon FSx File Gateway (no longer available to new customers as of October 28, 2024)
  • Volume Gateway
  • Tape Gateway
• Storage Gateway integrates with AWS Backup for centralized backup management of Volume Gateway volumes.
• Storage Gateway supports public, Amazon VPC, and FIPS service endpoints.
• Storage Gateway supports IPv6 via dual-stack endpoints (announced September 2025).
• Storage Gateway supports VPC endpoint policies for granular access control (announced September 2025).

Storage Gateway Deployment Options

• Storage Gateway can be deployed in several ways:
  • Virtual Machine (VM) – on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Linux KVM on-premises
  • Hardware Appliance – dedicated on-premises hardware (end of availability May 12, 2025)
  • VM in VMware Cloud on AWS – for VMware-based cloud environments
  • Amazon EC2 instance – deployed within Amazon VPC
• Storage Gateway provides high availability on VMware through VMware vSphere High Availability (VMware HA), automatically recovering from most service interruptions in under 60 seconds.
• Storage Gateway supports local cache of up to 64 TB for all gateway types.

Amazon S3 File Gateway

• Amazon S3 File Gateway supports a file interface into S3 and combines the service with a virtual software appliance.
• Allows storing and retrieving of objects in S3 using industry-standard file protocols such as NFS and SMB.
• Software appliance, or gateway, is deployed into the on-premises environment as a VM running on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Linux KVM hypervisor.
• Provides access to objects in S3 as files or file share mount points. It can be considered as a file system mount on S3.
• Durably stores POSIX-style metadata, including ownership, permissions, and timestamps in S3 as object user metadata associated with the file.
• Provides a cost-effective alternative to on-premises storage.
• Provides low-latency access to data through transparent local caching (up to 64 TiB).
• Manages data transfer to and from AWS, buffers applications from network congestion, optimizes and streams data in parallel, and manages bandwidth consumption.
• Easily integrates with services like IAM, KMS, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, etc.
• S3 File Gateway publishes audit logs for SMB file share user operations to Amazon CloudWatch.
• S3 File Gateway supports the following Amazon S3 storage classes:
  • S3 Standard
  • S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA)
  • S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA)
  • S3 Intelligent-Tiering
  • S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (via lifecycle policies)
  • S3 Glacier Deep Archive (via lifecycle policies)
• S3 File Gateway does NOT support S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval storage class directly.
• S3 File Gateway allows you to:
  • Store and retrieve files directly using the NFS version 3 or 4.1 protocol.
  • Store and retrieve files directly using the SMB file system version 2 and 3 protocol.
  • Access the data directly in S3 from any AWS Cloud application or service.
  • Manage S3 data using lifecycle policies, cross-region replication, and versioning.
• Use cases include backing up on-premises file data to S3, hybrid cloud workflows, machine learning, and big data analytics.

Volume Gateways

• Volume gateways provide cloud-backed storage volumes that can be mounted as Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) devices from the on-premises application servers.
• All data is securely stored in AWS; the approach differs in how much data is stored on-premises.
• Exposes a compatible iSCSI interface on the front end to easily integrate with existing backup applications and represents another disk drive.
• Backs up the data incrementally by taking snapshots which are stored as EBS snapshots in S3. These snapshots can be restored as gateway storage volumes or used to create EBS volumes to be attached to an EC2 instance.
• Volume Gateway integrates with AWS Backup for centralized backup management, supporting both cached and stored volumes.
• Data written to volumes can be backed up using either the Storage Gateway native snapshot scheduler or AWS Backup service.

Gateway Cached Volumes

• Gateway Cached Volumes store data in S3, which acts as primary data storage, and retains a copy of recently read data locally for low latency access to the frequently accessed data.
• Gateway-cached volumes offer substantial cost savings on primary storage and minimize the need to scale the storage on-premises.
• All gateway-cached volume data and snapshot data are stored in S3 encrypted at rest using server-side encryption (SSE) and it cannot be accessed with S3 API or any other tools.
• Each gateway configured for gateway-cached volumes can support up to 32 volumes, with each volume ranging from 1 GiB to 32 TiB, for a total maximum storage volume of 1,024 TiB (1 PiB).
• If you create a snapshot from a cached volume that is more than 16 TiB in size, you can restore it to a Storage Gateway volume but not to an Amazon EBS volume.
• Gateway VM can be allocated disks:
  • Cache storage
    • Cache storage acts as the on-premises durable storage, stores the data before uploading it to S3.
    • Cache storage also stores recently read data for low-latency access.
    • Maximum cache size: 64 TiB.
  • Upload buffer
    • Upload buffer acts as a staging area before the data is uploaded to S3.
    • Gateway uploads data over an encrypted SSL connection to AWS, where it is stored encrypted in S3.

Gateway Stored Volumes

• Gateway stored volumes maintain the entire data set locally to provide low-latency access.
• Gateway asynchronously backs up point-in-time snapshots (in the form of EBS snapshots) of the data to S3 which provides durable off-site backups.
• Gateway stored volume configuration provides durable and inexpensive off-site backups that you can recover to your local data center or EC2 for e.g., if you need replacement capacity for disaster recovery, you can recover the backups to EC2.
• Each gateway configured for gateway-stored volumes can support up to 32 volumes, ranging from 1 GiB to 16 TiB, and total volume storage of 512 TiB.
• Gateway VM can be allocated disks:
  • Volume Storage
    • For storing the actual data.
    • Can be mapped to on-premises direct-attached storage (DAS) or storage area network (SAN) disks.
  • Upload buffer
    • Upload buffer acts as a staging area before the data is uploaded to S3.
    • Gateway uploads data over an encrypted SSL connection to AWS, where it is stored encrypted in Amazon S3.

Tape Gateway – Gateway-Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

• Tape Gateway offers a durable, cost-effective data archival solution.
• VTL interface can help leverage existing tape-based backup application infrastructure to store data on virtual tape cartridges created on the tape gateway.
• Each Tape Gateway is preconfigured with a media changer and tape drives, which are available to the existing client backup applications as iSCSI devices. Tape cartridges can be added as needed to archive the data.
• Tape Gateway provides a virtual tape infrastructure that scales seamlessly with business needs and eliminates the operational burden of provisioning, scaling, and maintaining a physical tape infrastructure.
• Tape Gateway compresses data and transitions virtual tapes between Amazon S3 and Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (formerly S3 Glacier) or Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive to minimize storage costs.
• Tape Gateway on AWS Snowball Edge enables offline migration of petabytes of physical tape data to AWS without network bandwidth constraints.
• Tape Gateway has the following components:
  • Virtual Tape
    • Virtual tape is similar to the physical tape cartridge, except that the data is stored in the AWS storage solution.
    • Each gateway can contain 1500 tapes or up to 1 PiB of total tape data, with each tape ranging from 100 GiB to 15 TiB (increased from 5 TiB in 2022).
  • Virtual Tape Library (VTL)
    • Virtual tape library is similar to the physical tape library with tape drives (replaced with VTL tape drive) and robotic arms (replaced with Media changer).
    • Tapes in the Virtual tape library are backed up in Amazon S3.
    • Backup software writes data to the gateway, the gateway stores data locally, and then asynchronously uploads it to virtual tapes in S3.
  • Archive (Virtual Tape Shelf – VTS)
    • Virtual tape shelf is similar to the offsite tape holding facility.
    • Archived tapes are stored in Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval (formerly S3 Glacier) or Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive for extremely low-cost storage for data archiving.
    • VTS is located in the same region where the gateway was created and every region would have a single VTS irrespective of the number of gateways.
    • Archiving tapes:
      • When the backup software ejects a tape, the gateway moves the tape to the VTS (S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or S3 Glacier Deep Archive based on the tape pool).
    • Retrieving tapes:
      • Tapes archived in S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval are typically available within 3-5 hours.
      • Tapes archived in S3 Glacier Deep Archive are typically available within 12 hours.
    • Tapes can be moved from S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval to S3 Glacier Deep Archive to further reduce costs, but cannot be moved back.
• Gateway VM can be allocated disks for:
  • Cache storage
    • Cache storage acts as the on-premises durable storage, stores the data before uploading it to S3.
    • Cache storage also stores recently read data for low-latency access.
    • Maximum cache size: 64 TiB.
  • Upload buffer
    • Upload buffer acts as a staging area before the data is uploaded to the Virtual tape.
    • Gateway uploads data over an encrypted SSL connection to AWS, where it is stored encrypted in S3.
    • Maximum upload buffer: 2 TiB.

Tape Gateway on AWS Snowball Edge

• Tape Gateway on Snowball Edge enables offline migration of petabytes of physical tape data to AWS without changing existing tape-based backup workflows.
• A standard Tape Gateway uses the network connection to transfer data asynchronously; Tape Gateway on Snowball Edge stores data on the device itself until returned to AWS.
• After receiving the device, unlock it, set up a Tape Gateway on it, copy tape data to it, and ship it back to AWS.
• AWS stores tape data in S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
• Each Snowball Edge device can migrate up to 80 TB of tape data.
• Ideal for environments with network-connectivity limitations, bandwidth constraints, or high connection costs.

Amazon FSx File Gateway (No Longer Available to New Customers)

• Amazon FSx File Gateway provided low-latency, on-premises access to fully managed file shares in Amazon FSx for Windows File Server.
• Used SMB protocol for user or team file shares and file-based application migrations.
• Maintained a local cache for low-latency access to frequently accessed data.
• For new deployments, use Amazon FSx for Windows File Server directly.

AWS Certification Exam Practice Questions

• Questions are collected from Internet and the answers are marked as per my knowledge and understanding (which might differ with yours).
• AWS services are updated everyday and both the answers and questions might be outdated soon, so research accordingly.
• AWS exam questions are not updated to keep up the pace with AWS updates, so even if the underlying feature has changed the question might not be updated
• Open to further feedback, discussion and correction.

1. Which of the following services natively encrypts data at rest within an AWS region? Choose 2 answers
   1. AWS Storage Gateway
   2. Amazon DynamoDB
   3. Amazon CloudFront
   4. Amazon Glacier
   5. Amazon Simple Queue Service
2. What does the AWS Storage Gateway provide?
   1. It allows to integrate on-premises IT environments with Cloud Storage
   2. A direct encrypted connection to Amazon S3.
   3. It’s a backup solution that provides an on-premises Cloud storage.
   4. It provides an encrypted SSL endpoint for backups in the Cloud.
3. You’re running an application on-premises due to its dependency on non-x86 hardware and want to use AWS for data backup. Your backup application is only able to write to POSIX-compatible block-based storage. You have 140TB of data and would like to mount it as a single folder on your file server. Users must be able to access portions of this data while the backups are taking place. What backup solution would be most appropriate for this use case?
   1. Use Storage Gateway and configure it to use Gateway Cached volumes.
   2. Configure your backup software to use S3 as the target for your data backups.
   3. Configure your backup software to use Glacier as the target for your data backups
   4. Use Storage Gateway and configure it to use Gateway Stored volumes (Data is hosted on the On-premise server as well. The requirement for 140TB is for file server On-Premise more to confuse and not in AWS. Just need a backup solution hence stored instead of cached volumes)
4. A customer has a single 3-TB volume on-premises that is used to hold a large repository of images and print layout files. This repository is growing at 500 GB a year and must be presented as a single logical volume. The customer is becoming increasingly constrained with their local storage capacity and wants an off-site backup of this data, while maintaining low-latency access to their frequently accessed data. Which AWS Storage Gateway configuration meets the customer requirements?
   1. Gateway-Cached volumes with snapshots scheduled to Amazon S3
   2. Gateway-Stored volumes with snapshots scheduled to Amazon S3
   3. Gateway-Virtual Tape Library with snapshots to Amazon S3
   4. Gateway-Virtual Tape Library with snapshots to Amazon Glacier
5. You have a proprietary data store on-premises that must be backed up daily by dumping the data store contents to a single compressed 50GB file and sending the file to AWS. Your SLAs state that any dump file backed up within the past 7 days can be retrieved within 2 hours. Your compliance department has stated that all data must be held indefinitely. The time required to restore the data store from a backup is approximately 1 hour. Your on-premise network connection is capable of sustaining 1gbps to AWS. Which backup methods to AWS would be most cost-effective while still meeting all of your requirements?
   1. Send the daily backup files to Glacier immediately after being generated (will not meet the RTO)
   2. Transfer the daily backup files to an EBS volume in AWS and take daily snapshots of the volume (Not cost effective)
   3. Transfer the daily backup files to S3 and use appropriate bucket lifecycle policies to send to Glacier (Store in S3 for seven days and then archive to Glacier)
   4. Host the backup files on a Storage Gateway with Gateway-Cached Volumes and take daily snapshots (Not Cost effective as local storage as well as S3 storage)
6. A customer implemented AWS Storage Gateway with a gateway-cached volume at their main office. An event takes the link between the main and branch office offline. Which methods will enable the branch office to access their data? Choose 3 answers
   1. Use a HTTPS GET to the Amazon S3 bucket where the files are located (gateway volumes are only accessible from the AWS Storage Gateway and cannot be directly accessed using Amazon S3 APIs)
   2. Restore by implementing a lifecycle policy on the Amazon S3 bucket.
   3. Make an Amazon Glacier Restore API call to load the files into another Amazon S3 bucket within four to six hours.
   4. Launch a new AWS Storage Gateway instance AMI in Amazon EC2, and restore from a gateway snapshot
   5. Create an Amazon EBS volume from a gateway snapshot, and mount it to an Amazon EC2 instance.
   6. Launch an AWS Storage Gateway virtual iSCSI device at the branch office, and restore from a gateway snapshot
7. A company uses on-premises servers to host its applications. The company is running out of storage capacity. The applications use both block storage and NFS storage. The company needs a high-performing solution that supports local caching without rearchitecting its existing applications. Which combination of actions should a solutions architect take to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
   1. Mount Amazon S3 as a file system to the on-premises servers.
   2. Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway file gateway to replace NFS storage.
   3. Deploy AWS Snowball Edge to provision NFS mounts to on-premises servers.
   4. Deploy an AWS Storage Gateway volume gateway to replace the block storage.
   5. Deploy Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) volumes and mount them to on-premises servers.
8. A company has petabytes of data stored on physical tapes in an offsite tape library. The company wants to migrate this tape data to AWS but has limited network bandwidth. Which solution meets these requirements with MINIMAL network usage?
   1. Set up a Tape Gateway and transfer tapes over the internet connection.
   2. Use AWS Snowball Edge with Tape Gateway to migrate tape data offline.
   3. Use AWS Direct Connect to transfer tape data to S3 Glacier.
   4. Set up an S3 File Gateway and copy tape contents as files.
9. A company wants to archive virtual tapes at the lowest possible cost for long-term retention. The data is accessed less than once a year and can tolerate a 12-hour retrieval time. Which Tape Gateway archive storage class should they use?
   1. Amazon S3 Standard
   2. Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
   3. Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval
   4. Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive (Lowest cost, 12-hour retrieval time acceptable for once-a-year access)
10. A solutions architect needs to provide on-premises applications with low-latency access to data stored in AWS while ensuring all data is backed up using a centralized backup service. Which combination of services should be used? (Choose two.)
    1. AWS Storage Gateway Volume Gateway
    2. Amazon S3 with cross-region replication
    3. Amazon EFS with AWS DataSync
    4. AWS Backup
    5. Amazon S3 Glacier

References

1. AWS Storage Gateway – Volume Gateway User Guide
2. Amazon S3 File Gateway User Guide
3. Tape Gateway User Guide
4. AWS Storage Gateway Features
5. AWS Storage Gateway FAQs