Patent ID: 8639921

Claim:
A method, comprising: instantiating a storage gateway in a customer network; initiating, by the storage gateway, an activation process with a service provider, wherein the service provider implements a storage service that provides a remote data store to customers of the service provider; receiving, by the storage gateway during the activation process, security credentials from the service provider; initiating, by the storage gateway, at least one secure connection to the service provider for remotely managing the storage gateway and for storing customer data to the remote data store via the storage service; and receiving, by the storage gateway via the at least one secure connection to the service provider, configuration instructions from an administrative process on the customer network, wherein the configuration instructions are specified by the administrative process via a console process of the service provider; wherein the storage gateway operates as an interface between one or more customer processes on the customer network and the storage service to store customer data to the remote data store.