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Cloud Storage Gateway:Scenarios

Last Updated:Jan 12, 2024

This topic describes the common scenarios for which Cloud Storage Gateway (CSG) is used.

Storage scale-out and data migration

CSG is integrated with intelligent caching algorithms, which automatically distinguish between hot and cold data. This technology allows CSG to store cold data in the cloud and retain hot data in local caches to accelerate data retrieval. You can transfer a large amount of data in the cloud storage to a local center without additional configurations. This way, you can expand your data storage from a data center to the cloud. The cloud also retains a full copy of data. This ensures the integrity of both your hot and cold data. CSG can be used in the following scenarios:

  • Share data and files: Files and data are shared among different computing clusters.

  • Back up data: Data from applications is synchronized to Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS) by using CSG and backup software, such as Veeam and NBU.

  • Archive cold data: Cold data is written from local hosts or ECS instances to Infrequent Access (IA) or archive OSS buckets by using CSG. This way, local disk space can be freed up to improve ROI.

Storage scale-out and data migration

Cloud disaster recovery

As cloud computing becomes more widely used, an increasing number of users start to run their workloads in the cloud. Therefore, the reliability and continuity of workloads that are running in the cloud become critical issues. CSG supports virtualization. You can integrate third-party services with Alibaba Cloud services to perform disaster recovery.

Cloud disaster recovery

Cross-region data sharing and data distribution

You can deploy CSG instances in multiple regions and associate the CSG instances with the same OSS bucket to quickly share and distribute files across multiple regions. This feature is suitable for branch offices where data needs to be synchronized and shared.

Compatible with legacy applications

Some users may run both legacy and modern applications in the cloud. In this case, the legacy applications that are migrated from a data center use standard storage protocols, such as NFS, SMB, and iSCSI. In most cases, modern applications are developed based on cutting-edge technologies and support object access protocols. Data communication among applications over different protocols requires complicated operations. As a solution, CSG allows you to establish communications among applications over different protocols and enables data exchange between legacy applications and modern applications.

Compatibility with legacy applications

An alternative to ossfs and ossftp

ossfs and ossftp are open source tools based on file protocols. You can use ossfs and ossftp to directly upload files to OSS. However, ossfs and ossftp are not supported in the production environment due to their low compatibility with POSIX. Using ossfs and ossftp to mount file systems to a client also requires additional configurations and caches. In scenarios in which you need to use ossfs and ossftp to mount file systems on multiple clients, the configuration process may require a long period of time.

CSG is an excellent alternative to ossfs and ossftp. To accelerate access to data that is stored in OSS, create a CSG instance, then mount an NFS share on your local client, or map a Windows SMB share to a network drive. Then, you can manage data in the remote OSS bucket in the same way that you manage data in a local file system.

An alternative to ossfs and ossftp