AWS Storage Gateway types: S3 File, FSx File, Volume and Tape

Try 3 questions on this

Pick an answer to see why each option is right or wrong.

1. A company spends heavily on a physical tape library, offsite tape courier services and a support contract, to keep seven years of backups it almost never reads. Its backup software is certified against tape and cannot be replaced this year. Which solution meets these requirements?

   Right. In the game that’s Renown for your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building.

   Not that one: B is right. In the game your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building would lose a little Renown, and this question would come back later.

   Your answerA.Replace the backup software with a tool that writes to Amazon S3 directly, and retire the tape library.Replacing certified backup software is the change the company has ruled out for this year.The answerB.Deploy a Tape Gateway so the software writes virtual tapes that are archived in the S3 Glacier storage classes.The software keeps writing tapes and the tapes stop being physical. "Tape Gateway provides cloud-backed virtual tape storage. With Tape Gateway, you can cost-effectively and durably archive backup data in S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or S3 Glacier Deep Archive. Tape Gateway provides a virtual tape infrastructure that scales seamlessly with your business needs and eliminates the operational burden of provisioning, scaling, and maintaining a physical tape infrastructure." Seven years of rarely-read data in a Glacier class is what the archive classes are priced for.Your answerC.Deploy a Volume Gateway with cached volumes and have the backup software write its archives to them.Cached volumes present iSCSI disks, not the virtual tape library the backup software expects.Your answerD.Keep the tape library and ship the oldest tapes to a cheaper offsite vault under a new courier contract.A cheaper courier keeps the library, the media and the support contract, which are most of the spend.

   Written from docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/tgw/WhatIsStorageGateway.html

2. A team is choosing a Storage Gateway type. Its requirement is that existing Windows and Linux servers keep writing files over SMB and NFS to what looks like a file share, with the data landing in Amazon S3. Which approach will meet these requirements?

   Right. In the game that’s Renown for your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building.

   Not that one: C is right. In the game your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building would lose a little Renown, and this question would come back later.

   Your answerA.Use Volume Gateway, since its iSCSI volumes appear to servers as SMB and NFS file shares.Volume Gateway presents block devices over iSCSI, not file shares.Your answerB.Use any gateway type, because all gateway families expose the same file, volume and tape interfaces.The families differ precisely in the interface they present, which is how the choice is made.The answerC.Use a file-based gateway, since Storage Gateway offers S3 File Gateway and FSx File Gateway for this.The families are defined by the interface they present. "AWS Storage Gateway offers file-based (S3 File Gateway and FSx File Gateway), volume-based (Volume Gateway), and tape-based (Tape Gateway) storage solutions." A requirement stated in SMB and NFS points at the file-based family, and the choice between S3 File Gateway and FSx File Gateway follows from where the data should land.Your answerD.Use Tape Gateway, since the operating system's tape driver mounts virtual tapes as file shares.Tape Gateway presents a virtual tape library to backup software, not file shares.

   Written from docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/tgw/WhatIsStorageGateway.html

3. A company has no spare hypervisor capacity in its data centre and no budget for new server hardware this quarter, but wants to start using Storage Gateway for applications it has already migrated to Amazon EC2. Which approach will meet these requirements?

   Right. In the game that’s Renown for your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building.

   Not that one: D is right. In the game your Design Cost-Optimized Architectures building would lose a little Renown, and this question would come back later.

   Your answerA.Wait for hypervisor capacity, because the VM appliance is the only supported deployment option.The VM appliance is one of three deployment options, so waiting is unnecessary.Your answerB.Use the gateway's API alone, because the appliance is optional for EC2 workloads.A gateway is the thing that presents the storage; there is no gateway-less mode.Your answerC.Buy the Storage Gateway hardware appliance, because a gateway must sit on customer premises.A hardware appliance is one option among three, and it is the one the budget rules out.The answerD.Deploy the gateway as an Amazon EC2 instance, which is supported and suits EC2-hosted applications.EC2 is a first-class deployment target. "You can deploy Storage Gateway either on-premises as a VM appliance running on VMware ESXi, KVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Nutanix AHV hypervisor, as a hardware appliance, or in AWS as an Amazon EC2 instance." The documentation also names the use case: "you can use gateways hosted on EC2 instances for disaster recovery, data mirroring, and providing storage for applications hosted on Amazon EC2."

   Written from docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/vgw/WhatIsStorageGateway.html