Step 2.3: Access Your AWS Storage Gateway Volumes

To connect your Windows client to the storage volume

1. You need the host IP and the target name information for the storage volume you are connecting to. You can find this information in the AWS Storage Gateway console.

   1. In the Navigation pane of the console, select your gateway.

   2. In the Volumes tab, click the volume to connect to.

      The iSCSI Target Info tab shows the information you need to connect your client to this volume.

      

      You will use the Target Name and Host IP, as highlighted in the preceding image. The Host IP is required for the following steps and the Target Name is used to verify that you are selecting the correct iSCSI target.

2. Start the iSCSI Initiator.

   1. In the Start menu of your Windows client computer, type iscsicpl.exe and run the program.

      The iSCSI Initiator Properties dialog box appears if the iSCSI Initiator Service is running.

   2. If the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator Service is not running, you are prompted to start the service and have the service start automatically each time the computer restarts. Click Yes in the Microsoft iSCSI dialog box to start the service.

      

3. Discover the gateway:

   1. In the iSCSI Initiator Properties dialog box, click the Discovery tab, and click the Discovery Portal button.

      

   2. In the Discover Target Portal dialog box, in the IP address or DNS name field, enter the IP address of your iSCSI target, and click OK.

      

   3. The IP address is now displayed in the list of Target portals in the Discovery tab.

      

4. Connect to the storage volume target on the gateway:

   1. Click the Targets tab.

      The target you just discovered is shown with an inactive status. Note that the target name shown should be the same as what you noted for your storage volume in step 1.

      

   2. Select the target and click Connect.

      In the Connect to Target dialog box, if the target name is not prepopulated already, enter the name of the target name as shown in step 1, select the check box next to Add this connection to the list of Favorite Targets, and click OK.

      

   3. In the Targets tab, ensure that the target Status has the value Connected indicating the target is connected. Click OK.

      

To initialize and format the storage volume you just mapped

1. In the Start menu, type diskmgmt.msc to open the Disk Management console.

2. In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select MBR (Master Boot Record) as the partition style and click OK. When selecting the partition style, you should take into account the type of volume you are connecting to—cached or stored—as shown in the following table.

   Partition style	Use in the following conditions
   MBR (Master Boot Record)	For all stored-volumes (which are limited to 1 TiB in size), or cached-volumes less than 2 TiB.
   GPT (GUID Partition Table)	All stored-volume and cached-volumes. You must use GPT for cached-volumes greater than 2 TiB.

   

3. Create a simple volume:

   1. If the disk is offline, you must bring it online before you can initialize it. After the disk is initialized, it is ready to be formatted as a simple volume. All the available volumes are displayed in the disk management console. In the following example, Disk 1 is the storage volume. Notice that when you select the new volume, it displays hatch lines indicating that it is selected.

      

   2. Right-click the disk and select New Simple Volume.

      

      Important

      Be careful not to format the wrong disk. Check to make sure that the disk you are formatting matches the size of the local disk you allocated to the gateway VM and that it has a status of Unallocated.

      

   3. In the New Simple Volume Wizard, click Next.

   4. In the Specify Volume Size dialog box, leave the default values, and click Next.

      

   5. In the Assign Drive Letter or Path dialog box, leave the default values, and click Next.

      

   6. In the Format Partition dialog box, specify a Volume label field, and ensure that Perform a quick format is selected. Click Next.

      Caution

      Selecting Perform a quick format is highly recommended for cached-volumes as it results in less initialization I/O, smaller initial snapshot size, fastest time to a usable volume, and avoids cached-volume usage that is due only to the full format process and not any application-data related activity.

      

   7. Click Finish to close the wizard.

      Note

      The time it takes to format the volume depends on the size of the volume and may take several minutes to complete.