Download and Deploy the AWS Storage Gateway VM on Your Host

To download the VM

1. In the AWS Storage Gateway console, in the Setup and Activate Gateway wizard, navigate to the DOWNLOAD AND DEPLOY VM page.

2. Select I want to run the AWS Storage Gateway on VMware ESXi and click Continue.

   

3. Click Download to download a .zip file that contains the .ova file. Save the .zip file to a location on your computer.

   Note

   The .zip file is over 500 MB in size and may take some time to download, depending on your network connection.

   

1. Connect to your hypervisor host:

   1. Start the VMware vSphere client on your Windows client.

   2. In the login dialog box, enter the IP address of your host and your login credentials in the corresponding fields.

   3. Click Login.

      Your vSphere client is now connected to your host computer.

2. Deploy the AWS Storage Gateway VM on the host:

   1. From the File menu of the vSphere client, click Deploy OVF Template.

      

      This opens the Deploy OVF Template wizard. The wizard is a series of steps for you to provide the required information to deploy the VM.

   2. In the Source pane, provide the file path to the AWS Storage Gateway .ova package and click Next.

      

   3. In the OVF Template Details pane, click Next.

   4. In the Name and Location pane, enter the VM name in the Name field, and then click Next.

      This VM name appears in the vSphere client. However, this name is not used anywhere by AWS Storage Gateway.

      

   5. The following Datastore pane is displayed only if your host has multiple data stores. In this pane, you select a data store where you want to deploy the VM and click Next. Skip to the next step if your host has only one datastore.

      A datastore is a virtual representation of underlying physical storage resources. The following example shows a host that has two datastores: datastore1 and datastore2.

      

   6. In the Disk Format pane, select Thick provisioned format and click Next.

      When you use thick provisioning, the disk storage is allocated immediately, resulting in better performance. In contrast, thin provisioning allocates storage on demand.

      

   7. In the Ready to Complete pane, click Finish.

      The AWS Storage Gateway VM starts deploying to your host.

      

   8. View the details of the new VM.

      1. Depending on the state of your vSphere client, you may need to click the Inventory icon first to view the host object that contains the new VM.

         

      2. Expand the host object to view the details of the new VM.

         

To synchronize VM time with host time

1. Configure your VM time.

   1. In the vSphere client, right-click the name of your gateway VM and select Edit Settings.

      The Virtual Machine Properties dialog box opens.

      

   2. In the Options tab, select VMware Tools from the options list.

   3. Check the Synchronize guest time with host option and click OK.

      The VM synchronizes its time with the host.

      

2. Configure the host time.

   It is important to make sure that your host clock is set to the correct time. If you have not configured your host clock, use the following steps to set and synchronize it with an NTP server.

   1. In the VMware vSphere Client, select the vSphere host node in the left pane, and select the Configuration tab.

   2. Select Time Configuration in the Software panel.

   3. Click the Properties link.

      The Time Configuration dialog box appears.

      

   4. Set the date and time in the Date and Time pane.

      

   5. Configure the host to synchronize its time automatically to a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server:

      1. Click Options in the Time Configuration dialog box.

      2. In the NTP Daemon (ntpd) Options dialog box, select NTP Settings in the left pane.

         

      3. Click Add to add a new NTP server.

      4. In the Add NTP Server dialog box, enter the IP address or the fully qualified domain name of an NTP server and click OK.

         You can use pool.ntp.org as shown in the example.

         

      5. In the NTP Daemon (ntpd) Options dialog box, click General in the left pane.

      6. In the Service Commands pane, click Start to start the service.

         Note that if you change or add another NTP server reference later, you will need to restart the service to use the new server.

         

   6. Click OK to close the NTP Daemon (ntpd) Options dialog box.

   7. Click OK to close the Time Configuration dialog box.