Amazon moves into the private datacentre

Amazon has made its first move into the private datacentre with a product that provides a backup service from on-premise IT to the Amazon Web Services cloud.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Gateway beta, announced on Wednesday, links a company's IT systems with Amazon's storage cloud via a software agent that can be installed on commodity hardware.

"The service enables you to securely upload data to the AWS cloud for cost effective backup and rapid disaster recovery," Amazon said in a statement. "Data stored in your current datacentre can be backed up to Amazon S3, where it is stored as Amazon EBS snapshots... In the event you need to retrieve a backup of your data, you can easily restore these snapshots locally to your on-premises hardware."

The product is for companies that want a hybrid cloud so they can keep part of their data on-premise and the rest in Amazon's scalable, rentable IT stack. The software can be installed on host hardware to create storage volumes that attach as iSCSI devices to a company's on-premise servers. Once installed, the Storage Gateway can be controlled from the AWS management console.

Ideal uses for the product include disaster recovery and business continuity, backup and data migration, the company said.

Initially, storage volumes can be kept on the appliance — Gateway Stored — which keeps the data on-premise while automatically replicating it to the AWS cloud. In a few months the data will be cached via the appliance — Gateway Cache — with the full copy residing solely in the AWS cloud, the company said.

Each AWS Storage Gateway can handle up to 12TB of storage across 12 volumes. The service is available from Amazon datacentres in the US, Ireland, Singapore and Tokyo. To begin with, the AWS Storage Gateway is delivered via a virtual machine image.