In the following question, the answer says AWS CLI and Volume Gateway Stored Mode. Given that the question says, "without moving it to other storage first" that eliminates Volume Gateway Stored Mode as that would require me to move data from the file server to the Storage Gateway before it goes to S3. Am I missing something? Gateway Cached might make a little more sense as it would just land in the upload buffer and get sent straight to S3.
— Question —
You want to gradually migrate data directly from an on-prem RAID10 file server to S3 without moving it to other storage first. Which of these would you use? (Choose 2).
Storage Migration Service
AWS Snowball
EBS Snapshots
AWS CLI
Storage Gateway – Volume Gateway Stored Mode
Storage Gateway – Volume Gateway Cached Mode
1 Answers
Hi Karl,
There is a little-known feature for Storage Gateway-Stored Mode (or Stored Volumes as they now call it) to preserve the data on the existing volume. We would not be adding a new mount point, but you would mounting the existing volume from the Storage Gateway.
See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/GettingStartedCreateVolumes.html
–Scott
G’day Scott. Thank you for the response, apologies for labouring the point but it still doesn’t make sense to me. I’m guessing you’re referring to the "preserve existing data" option when creating a volume? If so, that appears to be for recovery of a storage gateway (see link below). I can’t imagine (nor find any example where) you could attach an existing NTFS, ZFS, BTRFS, etc. volume to a storage gateway and expect it to function. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/troubleshoot-volume-issues.html#troubleshoot-volume-issues.VolumeIrrecoverable
just for following the thread …. I’m not sure about this question either
Yes, Karl, I see your point in regards to the question and how it can be confusing. I’ll change the question to remove the confusion. I do not think you could just use some existing ZFS volume for example.
In fact that is what I was also thinking, however the answer explains that you can attache an existing file share by mounting it on the storage gateway. It will then replicate the data to S3 but no copying is needed. See the following link for some documentation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/latest/userguide/GettingStartedAccessFileShare.html
Hey mate, thanks for the reply. Still don’t think that makes sense. If the data is already on a file server it exists on a volume already in the file server. Adding a new mount is well and good but you still have to copy the data to the new mount before it will sync to S3 (thus moving it to other storage first). I think it might just be a poorly worded question and I’ll just ignore.