A video still from Amazon, roughly outlining the functioning of the Storage Gateway service
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In a long post on the Amazon Web Services blog Wednesday, Amazon launched the AWS Storage Gateway service, a tool for connecting on-premise software appliances with its cloud storage services, making its cloud products more accessible to users currently dealing entirely (or mostly) with on-premise IT.
Amazon says the new AWS Storage Gateway service enables data stored in a customer’s data center to be backed up to Amazon’s S3 storage, as EBS snapshots, which can be treated as backups, and restored to the on-premise hardware when necessary. The stored files can also be accessed as Amazon EBS volumes, which means data can be mirrored between on-premise applications and those based on EC2.
The post includes plenty of material on precisely how the gateway works, including this YouTube clip.
Amazon says it will support a range of technologies, but at launch the service takes the form of a VM image for VMware ESXi 4.1. A gateway runs within a customer’s data center, and can support up to 12 volumens and a total of 12TB of storage. They attach as iSCSI devices to on-site application servers and store a complete copy of the volume on the attached local storage, uploading backup snapshots to S3.
According to Amazon, all AWS users are eligible for a free trial of the Storage Gateway, which, following the trial, is priced at $125 per month per activated gateway. EBS snapshot storage rates apply, as well as regular AWS prices for outbound data transfer. Inbound data transfer is free.
A more complete picture of the pricing is available at the Storage Gateway page on the AWS site.
In the blog post, the company outlines several use cases it envisions for the tool, including disaster recovery and business continuity, general backup and data migration (to the cloud and back).
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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