Use a Storage Gateway tape gateway to reach on-premises tape from AWS
A media company has a 30-T8 repository of digital news videos. These videos are stored on tape in an on-premises tape library and referenced by a Media Asset Management (MAM) system. The company wants to enrich the metadata for these videos in an automated fashion and put them into a searchable catalog by using a MAM feature. The company must be able to search based on information in the video, such as objects, scenery items, or people’s faces. A catalog is available that contains faces of people who have appeared in the videos that include an image of each person. The company would like to migrate these videos to AWS. The company has a high-speed AWS Direct Connect connection with AWS and would like to move the MAM solution video content directly from its current file system. How can these requirements be met by using the LEAST amount of ongoing management overhead and causing MINIMAL disruption to the existing system?
Community Votes
66% of anonymous learners picked answer A. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.
Community Insight
A tape gateway is the only Storage Gateway type that can read the existing tape media, and it exposes the tapes as a file share over NFS with the content in S3 behind it, so the MAM can read and write to the library without any change to its workflow.
A media company has 30 TB of news video on tape in an on-premises tape library, managed by a Media Asset Management system. It must enrich metadata automatically and make videos searchable by content, using an existing face catalog as a Rekognition collection, and it wants minimal disruption to the existing system.
Choosing a file gateway because the goal is to reach S3. A file gateway requires its own local file system to back it, and the videos currently live on tape, so a file gateway cannot read the tape media at all. The data format of the source is what determines the gateway type, not the destination.
Community Discussion (18 comments)
Comments & Corrections
No comments yet — spotted an error or have a note? Share it below.
Expert Analysis
Why the Answer Is Correct
The videos are on tape, so a tape gateway is the correct Storage Gateway type: it mounts the existing tape library as an NFS file share and stores the data in the S3 bucket that backs it, without changing the MAM or moving the tapes. A Lambda function drives Amazon Rekognition using the face catalog as a collection, pulls each video from the S3 backing the gateway, obtains the metadata, and writes it back to the MAM, which then makes the videos searchable. This keeps the tapes and the MAM workflow in place, so ongoing management is limited to the gateway appliance and the scheduled enrichment function.Why the Other Options Are Wrong
A: A file gateway backs an application with a local file system and cannot read the tape media in the library, so it does not solve the access problem at all, and the option's premise that the current system is a file system does not match the stated tape library. C: Kinesis Video Streams requires a live stream of every video, and there is no other application processing this data, so building a streaming pipeline for batch backfill is unnecessary complexity. D: Copying 30 TB of tape content plus the face catalog into an EBS volume on a single EC2 instance creates a large self-managed server and still requires that instance to run the processing, which raises rather than lowers management overhead.Community Comment Notes
The community was split 66 to 34 between A and B. The arguments for B cited the Storage Gateway tape gateway documentation and noted that only a tape gateway can read the tape library that the question explicitly describes. The arguments for A leaned on the phrase move the video content directly from its current file system, but the setup states the videos are on tape, so the gateway type must match the tape media.Official Reference
Related Analysis
Practice All SAP-C02 Questions
Access 85 questions with complete answers and detailed explanations.
View Full SAP-C02 Practice Test →