AWS Storage Gateway and Snow Family

Not all data starts in the cloud. Many organisations have terabytes or petabytes of on-premises data that needs to be accessed, migrated, or backed up to AWS. AWS Storage Gateway and the AWS Snow Family bridge the gap between on-premises environments and AWS cloud storage.

---

AWS Storage Gateway

Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that provides on-premises applications with virtually seamless access to AWS cloud storage. It runs as a virtual machine (VM) or hardware appliance in your data centre and connects to AWS over the internet or AWS Direct Connect.

Gateway Types

Gateway Type	Protocol	Backend Storage	Use Case
S3 File Gateway	NFS / SMB	Amazon S3	File shares backed by S3; cloud tiering
FSx File Gateway	SMB	Amazon FSx for Windows	Low-latency local cache for FSx file shares
Volume Gateway (Cached)	iSCSI	Amazon S3 + EBS Snapshots	Primary data in S3, frequently accessed data cached locally
Volume Gateway (Stored)	iSCSI	Local + S3 Snapshots	Primary data stored locally, asynchronous backup to S3
Tape Gateway	iSCSI VTL	S3 / S3 Glacier	Replace physical tape backups with virtual tapes in AWS

---

S3 File Gateway

The S3 File Gateway presents S3 buckets as NFS or SMB file shares. Files written to the gateway are stored as objects in S3.

How it works:

On-premises servers → NFS/SMB → S3 File Gateway (VM) → Amazon S3

Feature	Detail
Local cache	Frequently accessed files are cached on the gateway for low-latency access
S3 storage classes	Objects can be stored in Standard, Standard-IA, One Zone-IA, or Intelligent-Tiering
Lifecycle policies	S3 lifecycle rules apply to the objects in the bucket
Access	Files appear as a standard NFS or SMB share to on-premises applications

Use cases:

• Cloud tiering — move infrequently accessed files to S3 while keeping them accessible
• Backup and archive — write backups to a local share that is automatically stored in S3
• Data processing — make on-premises data available to AWS analytics services (Athena, EMR)

FSx File Gateway

FSx File Gateway provides a local cache for Amazon FSx for Windows File Server. Windows applications and users see a standard SMB file share, with data stored in FSx and frequently accessed files cached locally.

Volume Gateway

Volume Gateway exposes block storage volumes over iSCSI:

Cached mode:

• Primary data is stored in S3.
• Frequently accessed data is cached on the local gateway.
• Best for workloads where the full data set is too large to store locally.

Stored mode:

• The complete data set is stored locally on the gateway.
• Asynchronous snapshots are taken and stored in S3 as EBS snapshots.
• Best for applications that need low-latency access to the entire data set with a cloud backup.

Tape Gateway

Tape Gateway replaces physical tape infrastructure with virtual tapes in AWS:

Backup software → iSCSI VTL → Tape Gateway (VM) → S3 / S3 Glacier

Tape State	Storage Location	Retrieval
Active virtual tape	Amazon S3	Immediate
Archived virtual tape	S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval	3-5 hours
Deep-archived tape	S3 Glacier Deep Archive	12 hours

Use case: Organisations using backup software (Veeam, Veritas, Commvault) that expects a tape library can point it at Tape Gateway instead of physical tapes.

---

AWS Snow Family

When you have large volumes of data to move to or from AWS, transferring over the network can take weeks, months, or even years. The Snow Family provides physical devices that you use to transfer data offline.

Snow Family Devices