Activating your hardware appliance

After configuring your IP address, you enter this IP address in the console on the Hardware page, as described following. The activation process validates that your hardware appliance has the appropriate security credentials and registers the appliance to your AWS account.

You can choose to activate your hardware appliance in any of the supported AWS Regions. For a list of supported AWS Regions, see Storage Gateway Hardware Appliance Regions in the AWS General Reference.

To activate your appliance for the first time or in an AWS Region where you have no gateways deployed

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Storage Gateway console at AWS Storage Gateway Management Console with the account credentials to use to activate your hardware.

   If this is your first gateway in an AWS Region, you see a splash screen. After you create a gateway in this AWS Region, the screen no longer displays.

   Note

   For activation only, the following must be true:

   • Your browser must be on the same network as your hardware appliance.

   • Your firewall must allow HTTP access on port 8080 to the appliance for inbound traffic.

2. Choose Get started to view the Create gateway wizard, and then choose Hardware Appliance on the Select host platform page, as shown following.

3. Choose Next to view the Connect to hardware screen shown following.

4. For IP Address in the Connect to hardware appliance section, enter the IPv4 address of your appliance, and then choose Connect to go to the Activate Hardware screen shown following.

5. For Hardware name, enter a name for your appliance. Names can be up to 255 characters long and can't include a slash character.

6. For Hardware time zone, enter your local settings.

   The time zone controls when hardware updates take place, with 2 a.m. local time used as the time for updates.

   Note

   We recommend setting the time zone for your appliance as this determines a standard update time that is out of the usual working day window.

7. (Optional) Keep the RAID Volume Manager set to ZFS.

   ZFS is used as the RAID volume manager on the hardware appliance to provide better performance and data protection. ZFS is a software-based, open-source file system and logical volume manager. The hardware appliance is specifically tuned for ZFS RAID. For more information on ZFS RAID, see the ZFS Wikipedia page.

8. Choose Next to finish activation.

A console banner appears on the Hardware appliance overview page indicating that the hardware appliance has been successfully activated, as shown following.

At this point, the appliance is associated with your account. The next step is to launch a file, tape, or cached Volume Gateway on your appliance.

Next step

Creating a gateway