What is AWS Storage Gateway?

What is AWS Storage Gateway?

For a business that has been around a while or relies on legacy systems, Storage Gateway is a godsend because "the old-fashioned way" means constant administration and even additional staff. With cloud services, these staff members are more available for online storage planning, strategy, and other tasks, while the storage infrastructure runs more efficiently. It can also be progressive and coordinated so you can adopt the cloud at your own pace. Moving data to the cloud is not as simple as flipping a switch. For companies that have run their own data centers or server rooms for decades, there are a few steps to consider, and it doesn't always make sense to take internal infrastructure offline fast enough. If a startup uses local enterprise servers and then experiences unexpected growth, abandoning those servers is pointless (even if the long-term plan is to do exactly that). AWS Storage Gateway is a way to bridge this gap for businesses of all sizes. It is a hybrid storage option that connects local storage, including legacy tape backup systems, to the cloud in a way that also provides one console to access all storage configurations. This is accomplished through a virtual machine or using a dedicated hardware gateway available from Amazon. Either way, the concept is the same: AWS Storage Gateway allows businesses to continue using local storage and backup, but opens them up to the world of cloud computing to offer all the benefits of reduced costs, flexibility and IT overhead. and easily scale up or down as the business evolves and grows. The Storage Gateway is available in three different versions. Perhaps the most common archive storage gateway is to create a connection between your existing storage infrastructure and AWS products such as Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon S3 Glacier, Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, and Amazon EBS (Elastic Block). store). Storage Gateway for Files is perhaps the most common offering for basic file storage needs. You can use it to back up your local storage, create a content library that uses local and cloud files, and to store the cloud database used by web applications. Cloud Storage Gateway Backup to Virtual Tape is the second offering and, as the name suggests, is designed for businesses with a legacy backup system. More common than you might think, tape backup is still used because of how companies originally created their storage libraries and how they should continue to use these same systems. The physical backup systems were likely expensive to install in the first place, and adding an entirely new backup system could create more problems for legacy applications, data, and storage. A volume gateway is the third option available as part of the storage gateway. With this offering, onsite storage can be attached to iSCSI mass storage volumes.

AWS Storage Gateway benefits

Businesses are sometimes "stuck" with legacy storage systems or expensive purchased hardware and software to manage their infrastructure. This is a headache as your IT staff must constantly expand storage, provision volumes, patch software, and maintain the entire system, even if the infrastructure may be outdated or inefficient. The main benefit of Storage Gateway is that it can bridge the gap between continuing to use these legacy storage systems and moving to the cloud. This means that you always keep the infrastructure on-site and you won't lose this investment, but at the same time, you can move data to the cloud and easily expand and adapt it. It's the best of both worlds, but it also allows you to embrace "the new world" of cloud storage. Because AWS Storage Gateway uses one interface for all storage configurations, it's easier to use than relying on a legacy system, which can involve multiple system-level interfaces. running on multiple servers, backup systems and storage arrays. As with all cloud services, AWS Storage Gateway offers scalability benefits to meet demand. However, the costs are not set in a way that requires you to use certain services or pay for infrastructure. You can keep the investment you have in local storage, but also pay as you go when you build and use the cloud for storage. One less-than-obvious advantage of using Storage Gateway is that it's a way to move away from on-site storage without sudden changes. You can gradually adopt cloud services and migrate your current data storage, legacy data and recovery backups to the cloud without major service interruptions or having to "start over" with cloud storage.