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Drobo How-To Guide
Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Gateway uses an on-premises virtual appliance to replicate
a portion of your local Drobo iSCSI SAN (Drobo B1200i, left below, and Drobo B800i, right below) to cloud-
based storage. This solution provides an option for redundant backup and disaster recovery in the cloud for
critical data, particularly for users that may not have a secondary site with IT equipment.
The AWS Storage Gateway is installed on a VMware host that is linked to an AWS account—providing an
on-ramp to cloud storage. Volumes of up to 1TB in size (12 volumes per gateway maximum) are created and
mounted by on-premises servers as iSCSI devices. Based on functionality available in the Beta version of
AWS Storage Gateway, data written to your gateway-stored volumes is recorded on Drobo storage and
asynchronously stored in Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) in the form of Amazon EBS (Elastic Block
Store) snapshots.
This guide provides the tested steps to sync data on Drobo iSCSI storage to the cloud for offsite backup
using gateway-stored volumes. The information in this guide can be the foundation for leveraging other
Amazon Web Services (AWS) for recovery in the cloud. For example, Amazon Route 53 service enables DNS
updating so that users are pointed to the instance running in the cloud. It is also possible to create an
Amazon EBS instance from an S3 backup, mount it with an Amazon EC2 instance, and restart the
application completely from the cloud.
www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN
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Summary of Contents for Drobo iSCSI SAN

  • Page 1 The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Gateway uses an on-premises virtual appliance to replicate a portion of your local Drobo iSCSI SAN (Drobo B1200i, left below, and Drobo B800i, right below) to cloud- based storage. This solution provides an option for redundant backup and disaster recovery in the cloud for critical data, particularly for users that may not have a secondary site with IT equipment.
  • Page 2: What You Will Need

    • VMware ESXi Hypervisor v4.1 or above (can work with the free vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi)) • Gateway appliance resources: at least 7.5GB of RAM, 4 virtual processors, and 75GB of disk space o Disk space for OVA appliance and system data can be stored on a Drobo iSCSI volume Prerequisites This document assumes that the Drobo iSCSI storage has been deployed and that a datastore has been configured in your VMware virtualization infrastructure.
  • Page 3 STEP 3 Click Download to save the Storage Gateway OVA Package. NOTE: The OVA appliance package is over 500MB and may take some time to www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 4 Provide the path to the AWS Storage Gateway OVA package and click Next. On the next screen the details of the appliance are shown. Click Next to continue. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 5 Enter a name for the VM that will be displayed within the vSphere client and click Next. The name provided will only be used in the VM inventory list within VMware. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 6 Typically this store will also be used to store all disk images associated with the appliance. STEP 9 Select Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed to allocate the disk storage immediately and click Next. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 7 ESXi server, select the appropriate network and click Next. STEP 11 Click Finish to complete the wizard and deploy the VM to the host server. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 8 In the Options tab, select VMware Tools on the left, check the box Synchronize guest time with host in the Advanced section at the right bottom, and select the Hardware tab. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 9 In the hardware tab, click Add to create the disk that will be used by the gateway for data storage. STEP 4 Select Hard Disk and click Next. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 10 Drobo. Data is billed on the size provisioned. Enter the size for the data disk to be replicated to AWS. Storage volumes can be any size between 1 and 1000GB. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 11 Once the initial synchronization is complete, the buffer volume can be resized to represent the average working state. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 12 Change Type to modify the controller type. STEP 10 Under the SCSI Controller Type, select VMware Paravirtual from the drop- down menu and click OK. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 13 Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN STEP 11 Verify that the two additional hard drives and the new paravirtualized SCSI controller have been added properly. Click OK to save the hardware changes. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 14 Proceed to Activation. NOTE: Your browser must have network connectivity to the gateway VM. If the activation process fails, verify connectivity between your computer and the gateway www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 15 AWS management console. NOTE: Deployed gateways are displayed by region. If no gateways are displayed, verify that the correct region is selected from the drop- down menu. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 16 (This disk was configured specifically for the appliance so no data will be lost.) The AWS storage appliance setup is now complete and you are ready to provision storage. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 17 The storage volume is now active and linked to the storage gateway. Any data written to this device will be replicated to cloud-based AWS storage. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 18 Alternatively, the iSCSI imitator can be found in the control panel. STEP 1 Once the iSCSI initiator loads, select the Discovery tab and click Discover Portal to add a target portal. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 19 Select the target (targets available for mapping are listed as Inactive), and click Connect to map the storage to the server. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 20 Online. If the disk is offline, right-click on the drive and select Online. STEP 7 To create a partition, right- click on the disk and select New Simple Volume. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 21 Click Next to continue. STEP 9 The new disk must be a single partition using all available space. Leave all values set to the defaults and click Next. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 22 NOTE: Performing a standard format of an iSCSI disk can take several hours to complete. There is no advantage to performing a standard (full) format in this senario. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 23 24 hours. Automatic snapshotting cannot be disabled at this time. Before a snapshot can be restored a new disk must be added to the storeage gateway virtual appliance. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 24 The additional hard disk can be added while the virtual machine is running and no reboot is required. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 25 NOTE: When your application requests data that has not yet been restored, the gateway will download the requested information from AWS and resume the restoration process. www.drobo.com | Cloud Storage Using Amazon Storage Gateway with Drobo iSCSI SAN...
  • Page 26 1.866.97.DROBO Copyright 2012 Drobo, Inc. Data Robotics, Drobo, DroboEllite, DroboPro, BeyondRAID, and Smart Volumes are trademarks of Drobo, Inc., which may be registered in some jurisdictions. All other trademarks used are owned by their respective owners. Ÿ Ÿ All rights reserved. Specifications subject to change without notice.