A Quick Report of Gateway Stored Volume v.s. Gateway Cached Volume

Hello, Medium.

I’ll share with you what I’ve learned today, as taken mock exams.

Today’s topic is the differences between two modes of AWS Storage Gateway, Gateway Stored Volume and Gateway Cached Volume .

First of all, I’ll start to explain what AWS Storage Gateway is like.

What is AWS Storage Gateway?

An article of AWS documantation says.

AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that gives you on-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage.

AWS Storage Gateway - Amazon Web Services

The features for me are as follows.

- On-premises access to virtually unlimited cloud storage
- Optimized data transfer functions, including caching that delivers low latency for frequently accessed data
- Without modifying client's local infrastructures
- Compatible with the following storage protocols
  - NFS, SMB, iSCSI, and iSCSI-VTL

That is, you can get the chances to leverage both your capacity and your latency forward data without expanding your local environments.

If you are interested in the other similar services, see the follow links.

cf. What is the usecase of AWS Snowball, not but of AWS Storage Gateway?

Articles: AWS Data Transfer Services — AWS Storage Gateway, AWS Snowball, AWS Snowball Edge, and Data Transfer Services

cf. AWS Storage Gateway Alternatives & Competitors

Storage Gateway Family

AWS Storage Gateway has three types, such as Volume Gateway, File Gateway, and Tape Gateway.

FIGURE 1: “Storage Gateway Family?”, created by myself

What are the types’ differences?

My opinion is how to be stored .

This service provides three storage methods as the following figure.

FIGURE 2: “How to be Stored?”, created by myself

Of all them, it is Volume Gateway that I’m faced with questions related to, so I would like to focused on it in this article.

Which to Store the Primary, in your locall environments or in the AWS’s?

Volume Gateway gives us two stored location’s choices.

The first is by locally , the second is by Amazon S3 .

FIGURE 3: “Where to Store the Primary?”, created by myself

Then, I’ll check out the features one by one.

Stored Mode’s features are as follows.

- Stored by locally as primary data storage
  -> Asynchronously backing up that data to Amazon S3 as Amazon EBS 
     snapshots
- Useful to help network latency lower and disk performance better
- Recovering from disasters gets simple/easy

FIGURE 4: “aws-storage-gateway-stored-diagram”, How AWS Storage Gateway Works (Architecture) — AWS Storage Gateway

Cached Mode’s features are as well.

- Stored by Amazon S3 as primary data storage
  -> Frequently accessed data is by locally
- Useful to minimize the need to scale your on-premises storage infrastructure

FIGURE 5: “aws-storage-gateway-cached-diagram”, How AWS Storage Gateway Works (Architecture) — AWS Storage Gateway

Conclusion

Let’s have a look at my simple comparison diagram as noted above.

FIGURE 3, repeated as Figure 6: “Where to Store the Primary?”, created by myself

The point is as follows.

- Gateway Stored Volume 
  -> Stored by locally as primary data storage

- Gateway Cached Volume
  -> Stored by Amazon S3 as primary data storage

I hope you prepare your test.

Please like this article and follow me:)

gakuji tamaki