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AWS Storage Gateway is a fully managed hybrid cloud storage service that helps enable your on-premises applications to use AWS cloud storage.
Technically, it acts as a bridge between your local environment and the cloud, providing secure data transfer and storage capabilities. It integrates with existing applications through standard storage protocols like iSCSI or NFS. Storage Gateway can be deployed as a virtual appliance or hardware gateway, and it supports various configurations such as file, volume, and tape storage interfaces.
AWS Storage Gateway can be deployed using several methods based on your on-premises infrastructure needs. It can be deployed as a virtual machine, which can run on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, or Linux KVM on premises. Or, you can deploy Storage Gateway as a hardware appliance on-premises; as a VM in VMware Cloud on AWS; or as an AMI in Amazon EC2.
Use Cases of AWS Storage gateway
The common use cases of AWS Storage Gateway are:
Moving backups and archives from on-premises to the cloud: Organizations use the gateway to transfer infrequently accessed data to Amazon S3 or Glacier, freeing up local storage and reducing costs.
Reduce on-premises storage with cloud-backed file shares: File Gateway enables users to retain frequently accessed files locally while tiering cold data to the cloud, minimizing hardware dependencies.
Provide on-premises applications low-latency access to data stored in AWS: Cached volumes and file shares let on-prem apps access cloud-stored data with local performance, using minimal local storage for caching.
Data lake access for pre- and post-processing workflows: Hybrid environments can ingest or extract data from data lakes using Tape Gateway or File Gateway to support analytics, backup, and transformation pipelines.
Benefits of AWS Storage Gateway
Storing your data in the AWS cloud comes with benefits like lower management overhead, lower costs through S3 intelligent tiering or Glacier storage, and integration with AWS services for encryption, monitoring, and more. Key benefits or features include:
- Low-Overhead Storage Management: By offloading storage to AWS, Storage Gateway can reduce the upfront cost and complexity associated with maintaining and scaling on-premises storage, and it enables backup and disaster recovery with AWS services like S3, Glacier, and FSx for Windows File Server.
- Native AWS Integrations: It integrates natively with AWS services like CloudWatch, CloudTrail, IAM, and KMS, offering a unified management experience for monitoring, security, and compliance.
- Support for Standard Storage Protocols: AWS Storage Gateway supports standard storage protocols like iSCSI, SMB, and NFS, allowing you to connect your local applications to AWS storage without requiring any modifications.
- Low-Latency Data Access: The gateway provides a fully managed local cache that maintains recently accessed data, enabling low-latency performance for your applications while storing data in AWS.
- Optimized Data Transfer: AWS Storage Gateway offers optimized data transfer with intelligent buffering and upload management, alongside encryption for data in transit, ensuring secure and efficient movement of data between on-premises environments and AWS.
- Scalable and Stateless Design: The gateway is stateless, enabling easy scaling and management as your storage needs grow, without the complexity of managing state across multiple instances. AWS Storage Gateway gives you on-premise access to virtually unlimited cloud storage.
- SMB Support for Windows Applications: Storage Gateway’s File Gateway now supports the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol, allowing Windows-based applications to easily store and access objects in Amazon S3. This feature supports hybrid object-based workloads and integrates with corporate Active Directory for access control.
AWS Storage Gateway Types
The AWS Storage Gateway types are Amazon S3 File Gateway, Amazon FSx File Gateway, Tape Gateway, and Volume Gateway.
Essentially, S3 File gateway is the general option, FSx is optimized for Microsoft, Tape replaces physical tapes with virtual ones, and Volume is for block storage — let’s break each one down.
Amazon S3 File Gateway
Amazon S3 File Gateway allows your on-premises applications to use AWS S3 as a backend storage layer.
It provides a file interface where data is stored as objects in S3, accessible through standard file storage protocols like Network File System (NFS) and SMB. S3 File Gateway is recommended for scale-out, read-only access, fast repeated reads from cache, and database dumps. It is generally not recommended for high-performance writes, file editing, or managing departmental shares (due to its limitations in high availability and write efficiency). You can also use it with S3 intelligent tiering to automatically move files to low-cost storage options.
Amazon FSx File Gateway
Amazon FSx File Gateway optimizes on-premises access to fully managed file shares on AWS FSx for Windows File Server and FSx for Lustre.
This gateway provides a local cache of frequently accessed data, ensuring that applications have low-latency access while storing data durably in AWS. It simplifies moving Windows-based applications that require file storage to the cloud, without the need to modify existing applications or manage file storage infrastructure.
Tape Gateway: Virtual Tape Library
Tape Gateway is part of the AWS Storage Gateway service that simulates a physical tape library in the cloud. It allows you to replace the use of physical tapes with a virtual tapes stored in AWS Glacier or S3, for long-term backup and archival.
The gateway encrypts data in transit and at rest, integrates with existing backup applications via standard iSCSI interfaces, and facilitates data recovery and management processes.
Volume Gateway
Volume Gateway provides block storage to your applications using iSCSI, backed by AWS cloud storage.
It comes in two modes: cached and stored. In cached mode, S3 is used as the primary data storage whereas frequently accessed data is cached, i.e. kept on-premises for low-latency access. In stored mode, the entire dataset is kept on-premises and periodically backed up to S3 as EBS snapshots, enabling disaster recovery solutions.
How does AWS Storage Gateway Pricing Work?
AWS Storage Gateway pricing is based on the type of gateway you use—File, Volume, or Tape—and your usage of resources like storage, requests, and data transfer. You pay only for what you use, with no upfront fees or long-term commitments.
Let’s break down the main components of AWS Storage Gateway pricing:
Storage:
Requests:
Gateway Pricing:
Data Transfer:
Hardware Appliance Pricing:
How to Monitor AWS Storage Gateway costs?
Some metrics that are recommended to monitor include:
- CachePercentDirty: the percentage of the cache that contains modified data, which has not yet been committed or written to the storage disk. It helps in understanding how much of the cache contains data that needs to be synchronized with the storage to prevent data loss.
- CacheHitPercent: the percentage of read requests that were served from the cache rather than from the underlying slower storage disk. A high cache hit percentage typically improves performance, as accessing data from the cache is faster than accessing data from the primary storage.
- CacheFree: the amount of free space available in the cache. It is crucial for ensuring that there is sufficient space for caching new data without overwriting the existing data too frequently, which can maintain or improve performance and reduce latency.
- CachePercentUsed: similar to CacheFree but from the opposite perspective, this metric shows the percentage of the total cache capacity that is currently being utilized. Monitoring this helps in managing the cache size and optimizing cache performance, ensuring that the cache is not underutilized or overfilled, which can lead to decreased performance.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is the AWS Storage Gateway free?
No, Amazon Storage Gateway is not free. It is a fully managed hybrid cloud storage service that incurs costs based on gateway type (File, Tape, or Volume), the amount of data stored, requests made, and data transferred out of AWS. While there is no charge for inbound data transfer or activating a gateway, usage charges apply for virtual tape storage, snapshot storage, and data written to Amazon S3 or EBS. Always check the AWS Pricing page for current rates.
What are the 3 main storage types in AWS?
The three main storage types in AWS are:
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) – Object storage for unstructured data like images, videos, and backups.
Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) – Block storage used as disks for EC2 instances, ideal for databases and transactional apps.
Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) – Scalable file storage that allows multiple EC2 instances to access the same data concurrently.
Each type is optimized for different workloads, access patterns, and performance requirements.
What is the difference between AWS S3 and AWS Storage Gateway?
Amazon S3 is a scalable object storage service used for storing and retrieving data via web APIs. It’s ideal for cloud-native workloads. AWS Storage Gateway, on the other hand, is a hybrid cloud storage solution that enables on-premises applications to access AWS storage seamlessly. It acts as a bridge between on-prem environments and AWS cloud storage services like S3, EBS, or Glacier. Storage Gateway supports file, block, and tape-based access, making it useful for backup, disaster recovery, and hybrid storage workflows.
What is the size limit for AWS Storage Gateway?
The size limit depends on the gateway type:
File Gateway: Supports individual files up to 5 TB, backed by Amazon S3.
Volume Gateway: Each volume can be up to 32 TB; up to 64 TB per gateway.
Tape Gateway: Each virtual tape can be up to 5 TB, and a gateway can manage petabytes of virtual tape data.
These limits allow organizations to scale hybrid storage operations while maintaining compatibility with on-premises systems.
