Patent ID: 8601134

Claim:
A method, comprising: implementing, at a service provider, a plurality of gateway control servers; receiving, at a particular one of the plurality of gateway control servers, a connection request from a particular storage gateway on a customer network, wherein the storage gateway operates as an interface between one or more customer processes on the customer network and the service provider to store customer data to a remote data store provided by the service provider; in response to the connection request, holding, by the particular gateway control server, a connection to the particular storage gateway, wherein the storage gateway waits to receive requests from the service provider via the connection and does not initiate requests to the gateway control server via the connection; obtaining, by the service provider, information for the particular storage gateway; providing the information for the particular storage gateway to the particular gateway control server; and sending, by the particular gateway control server, one or more request messages to the particular storage gateway via the connection, wherein said one or more request messages include the obtained information.