A Guide to Create Amazon S3 File Gateway

Overview

Amazon S3 File Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows businesses to store and retrieve files in Amazon S3 using traditional file-based protocols such as NFS and SMB. It enables businesses to integrate their on-premises applications and workloads seamlessly with the cloud without replacing their file-based storage infrastructure.

The software appliance, or gateway, is installed as a virtual machine (VM) on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, or the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor in your on-premises environment. The gateway gives users access to Amazon S3 objects like files and mount points for file shares.

Amazon S3 Gateway comes with the following services:

• Files can be stored and retrieved directly using the NFS version 3 or 4.1 protocol.
• Using the SMB file system version 2 and 3 protocol, you can store and retrieve files.
• You can access your data in Amazon S3 directly from your AWS cloud applications or services.
• Manage your Amazon S3 data with lifecycle policies, cross-region replication, and versioning. You can think of Amazon S3 File Gateway as a system that mounts over Amazon S3.

Amazon S3 File Gateway combines multiple AWS services

An Amazon S3 File Gateway makes file storage in Amazon S3 easier, integrates with existing applications via file system protocols that are standard in the industry and offers a less expensive alternative to on-premises storage. Through transparent local caching, it also makes it possible to access data with low latency. Amazon S3 File Gateway manages data transfer to and from AWS. It also buffers applications from network congestion, optimizes and streams data in parallel, and manages bandwidth use.

Amazon S3 File Gateway combines multiple AWS services

• Shared access management with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• Encryption with AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)
• Monitoring with Amazon CloudWatch (CloudWatch)
• Check with AWS CloudTrail (CloudTrail)
• Operations using the AWS Management Console and AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI)
• Billing and expense management

Amazon S3 File Gateways Work

Downloading a VM image for the gateway is the first step in using an Amazon S3 File Gateway. The Storage Gateway API or the AWS Management Console can activate the gateway. An Amazon EC2 image can also be used to build an S3 File Gateway.

In Amazon S3, the path is the key for objects written to a file share. The gateway asynchronously updates the objects in Amazon S3 as you modify the files due to a one-to-one mapping between the two.

The key becomes the path, and the already-existing objects in the Amazon S3 bucket appear as files in the file system. Amazon S3–server-side encryption keys (SSE-S3) are used to encrypt objects. HTTPS is used for all data transfers.

The MD5 checksum of the uploaded data is added to the Content-MD5 header when File Gateway sends HTTPS data upload requests to Amazon S3. If the MD5 checksum computed by Amazon S3 and the value received from the File Gateway do not match, this header causes Amazon S3 to return a failure. The File Gateway resends the request if such a failure is returned.

Using multipart parallel uploads or byte-range downloads, the service optimizes data transfer between the gateway and AWS to use the bandwidth better. A local cache is maintained to reduce data egress costs and provide low-latency access to recently accessed data. Metrics from CloudWatch provide insight into the VM’s use of resources and data transfer to and from AWS. CloudTrail monitors every API call.

You can perform tasks like tiering, migrating storage data to the AWS Cloud, and ingesting cloud workloads to Amazon S3 with S3 File Gateway storage.

When uploaded to Amazon S3, Amazon S3 File Gateway converts them into Amazon S3 objects. Certain operations must be carefully considered when converting files and objects due to the interaction between file operations performed against file shares on Amazon S3 File Gateway and Amazon S3 objects.

Main components of Amazon S3 File Gateway

The following are the main components of Amazon S3 File Gateway:

1. File gateway appliance: This virtual machine image can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud. It provides a file interface (NFS or SMB) to access the data stored in Amazon S3. The appliance can be deployed on a physical server or a virtual machine.
2. Local disk cache: The file gateway appliance uses a local disk cache to store frequently accessed files. This helps to improve performance and reduce latency for file access.
3. AWS Storage Gateway service: The AWS Storage Gateway service manages the file gateway appliance and provides a central management console to configure and monitor the service. It also integrates with AWS services, such as Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudFormation.
4. Amazon S3: Amazon S3 is a cloud storage service that stores data. The files are stored as objects in Amazon S3 buckets, which can be accessed using the AWS Management Console, API, or CLI.
5. Network: The file gateway appliance communicates with Amazon S3 over the internet or a Direct Connect connection. It also communicates with client machines over the local network using the NFS or SMB protocol.

These components provide a scalable, durable, cost-effective solution for businesses to store and retrieve their files in the cloud using traditional file-based protocols.

Step to Create Amazon S3 File Gateway

Step 1: Open AWS Console in Search Bar Search Storage Gateway.

Step 2: Click on Gateway and click on Create Gateway.

Step 3: Enter the Gateway name and choose the gateway option

Step 4: Choose the platform option, for this, I choose Amazon EC2 Select settings, VPC, and Key Pair Click on Launch Instance.

Step 5: Let it create Required Resources.

Step 6: Select Endpoint Options and click next.

Step 7: Review Gateway Details

Step 8: Review Connection Details

Step 9: Configure cache storage.

Step 10: Configure CloudWatch log group

Step 11: Configure CloudWatch Alarms

Step 12: Create a File Share Bucket

Step 13: As needed, have an overlook and Create a File share drive

Amazon S3 File Gateway is easy to deploy, manage, and monitor using the AWS Management Console or API. It also provides integration with other AWS services, such as Amazon CloudWatch and AWS CloudFormation, to help automate the deployment and management of the service.

Conclusion

Amazon S3 File Gateway is an ideal solution for businesses storing and retrieving their files in the cloud using traditional file-based protocols. It offers a cost-effective, scalable, and highly available solution, making it an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes.

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