QNAP AWS Storage Gateway Appliance
Use QNAP NAS as an on-premise data gateway to your data stored in the AWS Cloud
QNAP NAS features robust hardware and provides well-rounded software and services to safeguard your data. By deploying the AWS Storage Gateway virtual machine on your QNAP NAS, your NAS can serve as a gateway to seamlessly connect to the AWS Cloud. Not only can you leverage the AWS Cloud service for backup, disaster recovery and cloud data processing, the AWS Storage Gateway service enables a hybrid cloud structure that creates a new storage tier on the cloud with a local cache on your NAS for efficient data management and low-latency access to frequently-accessed data.
What is AWS File Gateway? (File-based)
AWS File Gateway allows you to store files as objects in Amazon S3 using the standard NFS and SMB file protocols and enables quick access to your cloud files from your QNAP NAS with a local cache of frequently-accessed data. Deploy the File Gateway on your QNAP NAS if you need file storage in S3 for storage, backup purpose or computing workload requirements including data analytics and machine learning.
What is AWS Volume Gateway? (Block-based)
AWS Volume Gateway presents your storage volumes using the iSCSI block protocol. Data written to these volumes can be asynchronously backed up as point-in-time snapshots (Amazon EBS Snapshots) stored in the cloud and also for further data processing. You can deploy the Volume Gateway in cache mode on your QNAP NAS to gain quick access to your iSCSI volumes in Amazon S3 with a local cache, in stored mode to store your entire data volume in storage gateway locally with high access speed, or you can store the volume as EBS Snapshots for durable and inexpensive offsite backups that you can recover locally or easily deploy to another site.
Key features of AWS Storage Gateway
AWS Storage Gateway is a hybrid cloud storage service that connects your QNAP NAS with the AWS Cloud, allowing you to easily run hybrid cloud workloads including cloud backups, cloud processing, or performing a one-time migration of block volume data or databases.
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Standard Storage Protocols
Storage Gateway seamlessly connects to your local production or backup applications with NFS, SMB, or iSCSI, so you can adopt AWS Cloud storage without needing to modify your applications. Its protocol conversion and device emulation enables you to access block-based data on volumes managed by Storage Gateway on top of Amazon S3 and store files as native Amazon S3 objects.
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Optimized and Secured Data Transfer
Storage Gateway provides secure upload of changed data and secure downloads of requested data, encrypting data in transit between any type of gateway appliance and AWS using SSL. Optimizations such as multi-part management, automatic buffering, and delta transfers are used across all gateway types, and data compression is applied to all block-based data.
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Fully Managed Cache
Using a QNAP NAS as the local gateway maintains a cache of recently-read/wrote data so your applications can have low-latency access to data that is also stored in AWS.
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AWS Integrated
AWS Storage Gateway integrates with AWS both for storage and management. The service stores files as native Amazon S3 objects and stores EBS Snapshots generated by the Volume Gateway with Amazon EBS.
Steps to deploy AWS Storage Gateway on QNAP NAS
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Launch Virtualization Station, click “VM Marketplace”, and choose the required type of AWS Storage Gateway virtual machine to download and deploy.
- File gateway
- Volume gateway (Stored volumes, Cached volumes)
- When the deployment is completed, the AWS Storage Gateway virtual machine will be ready for connecting.
- Connect the Gateway with your AWS account to active and complete the configuration from the AWS console.
- Start using AWS Storage Gateway for building your hybrid cloud solution
Note:
NAS with QTS 4.3.x requires Virtualization Station version 3.1.1085 (or later); NAS with QTS 4.4.x requires Virtualization Station version 3.2.355 (or later).
For more information, see the AWS user guide:
- On-premises gateway deployment: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/en_us/storagegateway/latest/userguide/manage-on-premises.html
- On-premises gateway activation and configuration: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/en_us/storagegateway/latest/userguide/create-gateways.html
System requirements
The recommended hardware requirements for a QNAP VM appliance are:
- Four virtual processors assigned to the VM.
- 16 GiB RAM assigned to the VM.
- 80 GiB of disk space for installation of VM image and system data.
To enhance the performance of your gateway host NAS, we recommended the following gateway configuration:
- Use high-performance drives (such as NVMe SSDs) for running the storage gateway, cache and upload buffer.
- Configure storage with cache mode to "Force Writeback" and the interface to "VirtIO".
- Configure the network adapter to use "VirtIO".
For more performance guidance, see the AWS user guide:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/Performance.html