AWS Storage Gateway User Guide
Configuring an Upload Buffer and Cache Storage
Adding an Upload Buffer or Cache Storage
As your application needs change, you can increase the gateway's upload buffer or cache storage
capacity. You can add more buffer capacity to your gateway without interrupting existing gateway
functions. When you add more upload buffer capacity, you do so with the gateway VM turned on.
Important
When adding cache or upload buffer to an existing gateway, it is important to create new disks
in your host (hypervisor or Amazon EC2 instance). Don't change the size of existing disks if the
disks have been previously allocated as either a cache or upload buffer. Do not remove cache
disks that have been allocated as cache storage.
The following procedure shows you how to configure an upload buffer or cache storage for your
gateway.
To add and configure upload buffer or cache storage
1. Provision a new disk in your host (hypervisor or Amazon EC2 instance). For information about how
to provision a disk in a hypervisor, see your hypervisor's user manual. For information about how to
add Amazon EBS volumes for your Amazon EC2 instance, see
Adding and Removing Amazon EBS
Volumes for Your Gateway Hosted on Amazon EC2 (p. 356)
. You configure this disk as an upload
buffer or cache storage.
2. Open the AWS Storage Gateway console at
https://console.amazonaws.cn/storagegateway/home
.
3. In the navigation pane, choose
Gateways
.
4. In the
Actions
menu, choose
Edit local disks
.
5. In the Edit local disks dialog box, identify the disks you provisioned and decide which one you want
to use for an upload buffer or cached storage.
Note
For stored volumes, only the upload buffer is displayed because stored volumes have no
cache disks.
6. In the drop-down list box, in the
Allocated to
column, choose
Upload Buffer
for the disk to use as
an upload buffer.
7. For gateways created with cached volumes and tape gateway, choose
Cache
for the disk you want to
use as a cache storage.
If you don't see your disks, choose the
Refresh
button.
8. Choose
Save
to save your configuration settings.
Using Ephemeral Storage With EC2 Gateways
This section describes steps you need to take to prevent data loss when you select an ephemeral disk as
storage for your gateway's cache.
Ephemeral disks provide temporary block-level storage for your Amazon EC2 instance. Ephemeral disks
are ideal for temporary storage of data that changes frequently, such as data in a gateway's upload
buffer or cache storage. When you launch your gateway with an Amazon EC2 Amazon Machine Image,
and the instance type you select supports ephemeral storage, the disks are listed automatically and you
can select one of the disks to store data in your gateway's cache. For more information, see
in the
Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances
.
Application writes to the disks are stored in the cache synchronously, and asynchronously uploaded to
durable storage in Amazon S3. If the data stored in the ephemeral storage is lost because an Amazon
EC2 instance stopped before data upload was completed, the data that is still in the cache and has not
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