First, Upgrade the Memory
The VM needs 16GB of RAM. Asustor only officially supports 8GB. I bought 2 DDR4 2400 260pin 8GB SODIMMs for $52. The upgrade took about 10 minutes. Yes, 16GB of RAM works just fine.
Install Virtualbox
Nothing special here. Follow the instructions to install virtualbox on your NAS.
Create an S3 Bucket
S3 is really cheap cloud storage. You need a bucket for your data. Log into your AWS console and create a bucket.
Download the Storage Gateway VM
Go to Storage Gateway in the AWS console. Create a gateway. Follow the instructions to download the VMWare OVF image. Upload it to a shared folder on your NAS (or use a thumb drive).
Launch the VM
Import the image you downloaded into a new virtualbox guest. Give it the full 16GB of RAM.
Display: for Remote Display tab, default port is fine. Change Net Address to the IP address of the NAS.
Networking: I use Bridged Adapter over my main ethernet (eth1 in my case). Your VM must have access to the internet.
Audio: you can disable it
Storage: create a VMDK for each S3 bucket you want as a cached drive. I used the max (512GB) for my cache. You must use Fixed Size Storage.
Start the VM.
Configure the Gateway
- In the virtualbox interface, click on the VM, then under Display click the port number next to Remote Desktop Server Port. Once connected you should see a login prompt. User is admin, password is password (you should update this later from the AWS console)
- Use the menu to configure networking.
- When done, return to the top level menu and select 3) Test Network Connectivity.
- Do not proceed until this test passes. If it does not, return to Network Configuration until it does.
- Use the menu to get the Activation Key, which you will need in the next step.
- Back to the AWS console. There is a confirmation box below the VM information. Check it and click Next.
- Give the Activation Key when prompted
- The Storage Gateway service will contact your gateway and determine its storage configuration.
- On the screens that follow, set each of your local volumes to "Cache"
Create Shares
Last step is to create shares from the AWS console. From the Storage Gateway console, click File shares, then click the Create file share button
Refer to the documentation. This is pretty straight forward. You will choose the bucket (make sure you pick the correct region for the bucket), file share name as it will present on you network, and NFS or SMB.
In my implementation I used SMB with guest access (user smbguest and the password you set)