Understanding Storage Gateway Resources and Resource IDs

In Storage Gateway, the primary resource is a gateway but other resource types include: volume, virtual tape, iSCSI target, and vtl device. These are referred to as subresources and they don't exist unless they are associated with a gateway.

These resources and subresources have unique Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) associated with them as shown in the following table.

Storage Gateway also supports the use of EC2 instances and EBS volumes and snapshots. These resources are Amazon EC2 resources that are used in Storage Gateway.

Working with Resource IDs

When you create a resource, Storage Gateway assigns the resource a unique resource ID. This resource ID is part of the resource ARN. A resource ID takes the form of a resource identifier, followed by a hyphen, and a unique combination of eight letters and numbers, or 17 numbers and letters for a volume or snapshot. For example, a gateway ID is of the form sgw-12A3456B where sgw is the resource identifier for gateways, while a volume ID takes the form vol-112233AABBCCDDEEF where vol is the resource identifier for volumes.

Storage Gateway resource IDs are in uppercase. However, if you use these resource IDs with the Amazon EC2 API, Amazon EC2 expects resource IDs in lowercase. You must change your resource ID to lowercase to use it with the EC2 API. For example, in Storage Gateway the ID for a volume might be vol-112233AABBCCDDEEF. If you use this ID with the EC2 API, you must change it to vol-112233aabbccddeef. Otherwise, the EC2 API might not behave as expected.