How can I use snapshots and clones with AWS Storage Gateway to recover my volume data?

Resolution

Cached volumes are iSCSI-attached block storage volumes that store volume data. Cached volumes provide a managed cache of local disk data attached to the Storage Gateway appliance by your hypervisor. For more information, see Cached volumes architecture.

You can protect Storage Gateway cached volumes using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) snapshots and clones.

Note: Amazon EBS stored volumes can be up to 16 TiB, and Storage Gateway cached volumes can be up to 32 TiB. If your Storage Gateway volume is larger than 16 TiB, you can't create an EBS volume from a snapshot. For more information, see Quotas for volumes.

Take an EBS snapshot of your gateway cached volume, and then use the snapshot to create a new volume

Take an EBS snapshot of your gateway cached volume

1.    Open the Storage Gateway console. In the navigation pane, choose Volumes. Then, select the volume that you want to take a snapshot of.

2.    Choose Actions, and then choose Create EBS snapshot.

3.    In Snapshot description, enter a name for the snapshot. Then, choose Create EBS snapshot. Wait for the snapshot's Status to change from Pending to Available.
Note: The time it takes for the snapshot to become Available depends on the size of the volume.

4.    (Optional) To take snapshots on a reoccurring schedule, choose Actions, Edit snapshot schedule, and then choose the Start time and Recurrence. Enter a Description, and then choose Save.

5.    In EBS snapshots, select the name of your snapshot. Choose the Description tab, and then copy the Snapshot ID.

6.    From the navigation bar of the console, in the Region selector, select the AWS Region that your snapshot is in.
Note: To restore the snapshot to a volume in a different Region, first copy the snapshot to the new Region. Then, restore the snapshot to a volume in that Region. For more information, see Copy a snapshot.

7.    In the navigation pane, choose Volumes, and then choose Create volume.

8. Choose the Gateway that you want to use for the volume, and then enter the Capacity. In Volume contents, select Based on EBS snapshot, and then enter the EBS snapshot ID that you copied from step 5. For iSCSI target, enter a name, and then choose Create Volume.

9.    In Configure CHAP authentication, choose Skip.

Use the snapshot to create a new volume

1.    Open the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) console. In the navigation pane, choose Volumes, and then choose Create Volume.

2.    In the Create Volume wizard page, for Volume Type, choose General Purpose SSD, Provisioned IOPS SSD, Cold HDD, Throughput Optimized HDD, or Magnetic.

3.    Choose your Snapshot ID, and then for Size (GiB), enter the size. Note: If you specify both a volume size and a snapshot ID, the size must be equal to or greater than the snapshot size.

4.    In the IOPS field, enter the maximum number of input/output operations per second (IOPS) that the volume can support.

5.    Select your Availability Zone, and then choose Create Volume. Note: EBS volumes can be attached only to EC2 instances in the same Availability Zone.

(Optional) Create a clone of your volume from the most recent recovery point

Review the following considerations for recovering a new volume using a clone:

• Clones don't require you to create and store EBS snapshots beforehand.
• For recovery purposes, it might be faster to create and access the clone. With a clone, Storage Gateway creates the new volume instantly, and then copies the data from the initial volume in the background.

Note: It's a best practice to use EBS snapshots for maintaining specific recovery points in time, or to recover directly to an EBS volume.

1.    Open the Storage Gateway console, and then choose Create volume.

2.    In Gateway, choose the Volume gateway, and then enter the Capacity.

3.    In Volume contents, choose Clone from last volume recovery.

4.    In Source volume, select the volume that you want to clone.

5.    In iSCSI target,enter a name, and then choose Create Volume.

6.    In Configure CHAP authentication, choose Skip.

7.    In the navigation pane, choose Volumes, and then verify that the new volume is available and ready to use.

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Related information

Create Amazon EBS snapshots

Managing your volume gateway