Backing up your volumes - AWS Storage Gateway
Using Storage Gateway to back up your volumesUsing AWS Backup to back up your volumes

Backing up your volumes

By using Storage Gateway, you can help protect your on-premises business applications that use Storage Gateway volumes for cloud-backed storage. You can back up your on-premises Storage Gateway volumes using the native snapshot scheduler in Storage Gateway or AWS Backup. In both cases, Storage Gateway volume backups are stored as Amazon EBS snapshots in Amazon Web Services.

Using Storage Gateway to back up your volumes

You can use the Storage Gateway Management Console to back up your volumes by taking Amazon EBS snapshots and storing the snapshots in Amazon Web Services. You can either take a one-time snapshot or set up a snapshot schedule that is managed by Storage Gateway. You can later restore the snapshot to a new volume by using the Storage Gateway console. For information about how to back up and manage your backup from the Storage Gateway, see the following topics:

Using AWS Backup to back up your volumes

AWS Backup is a centralized backup service that makes it easy and cost-effective for you to back up your application data across AWS services in both the Amazon Web Services Cloud and on-premises. Doing this helps you meet your business and regulatory backup compliance requirements. AWS Backup makes protecting your AWS storage volumes, databases, and file systems simple by providing a central place where you can do the following:

  • Configure and audit the AWS resources that you want to back up.

  • Automate backup scheduling.

  • Set retention policies.

  • Monitor all recent backup and restore activity.

Because Storage Gateway integrates with AWS Backup, it lets customers use AWS Backup to back up on-premises business applications that use Storage Gateway volumes for cloud-backed storage. AWS Backup supports backup and restore of both cached and stored volumes. For information about AWS Backup, see the AWS Backup documentation. For information about AWS Backup, see What is AWS Backup? in the AWS Backup User Guide.

You can manage Storage Gateway volumes' backup and recovery operations with AWS Backup and avoid the need to create custom scripts or manually manage point-in-time backups. With AWS Backup, you can also monitor your on-premises volume backups alongside your in-cloud AWS resources from a single AWS Backup dashboard. You can use AWS Backup to either create a one-time on-demand backup or define a backup plan that is managed in AWS Backup.

Storage Gateway volume backups taken from AWS Backup are stored in Amazon S3 as Amazon EBS snapshots. You can see the Storage Gateway volume backups from the AWS Backup console or the Amazon EBS console.

You can easily restore Storage Gateway volumes that are managed through AWS Backup to any on-premises gateway or in-cloud gateway. You can also restore such a volume to an Amazon EBS volume that you can use with Amazon EC2 instances.

Benefits of Using AWS Backup to Back Up Storage Gateway Volumes

The benefits of using AWS Backup to back up Storage Gateway volumes are that you can meet compliance requirements, avoid operational burden, and centralize backup management. AWS Backup allows you to do the following:

  • Set customizable scheduled backup policies that meet your backup requirements.

  • Set backup retention and expiration rules so you no longer need to develop custom scripts or manually manage the point-in-time backups of your volumes.

  • Manage and monitor backups across multiple gateways, and other AWS resources from a central view.

To use AWS Backup to create backups of your volumes
Note

AWS Backup requires that you choose an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role that AWS Backup consumes. You need to create this role because AWS Backup doesn't create it for you. You also need to create a trust relationship between AWS Backup and this IAM role. For information about how to do this, see the AWS Backup User Guide. For information about how to do this, see Creating a Backup Plan in the AWS Backup User Guide.

  1. Open the Storage Gateway console and choose Volumes from the navigation pane at left.

  2. For Actions, choose Create on-demand backup with AWS Backup or Create AWS backup plan.

    If you want to create an on-demand backup of the Storage Gateway volume, choose Create on-demand backup with AWS Backup. You are directed the AWS Backup console.

    If you want to create a new AWS Backup plan, choose Create AWS backup plan. You are directed to the AWS Backup console.

    On the AWS Backup console, you can create a backup plan, assign a Storage Gateway volume to the backup plan, and create a backup. You can also do ongoing backup management tasks.

Finding and restoring your volumes from AWS Backup

You can find and restore your backup Storage Gateway volumes from the AWS Backup console. For more information, see the AWS Backup User Guide. For more information, see Recovery Points in the AWS Backup User Guide.

To find and restore your volumes

  1. Open the AWS Backup console and find the Storage Gateway volume backup that you want to restore. You can restore the Storage Gateway volume backup to an Amazon EBS volume or to a Storage Gateway volume. Choose the appropriate option for your restore requirements.

  2. For Restore type, choose to restore a stored or cached Storage Gateway volume and provide the required information:

    • For a stored volume, provide the information for Gateway name, Disk ID, and iSCSI target name.

    • For a cached volume, provide the information for Gateway name, Capacity, and iSCSI target name.

  3. Choose Restore resource to restore your volume.

Note

You can't use the Amazon EBS console to delete a snapshot that is created by AWS Backup.