Snowball

Snowball

  • It is a physical data transport solution which helps moving terra bytes or peta bytes of data in our out of AWS
  • Alternative to move data over network (in case of huge amount of data)
  • It is secure, temper resistant, it uses KMS 256 bit encryption
  • It has tracking using SNS and text messages. It has an E-ink shipping label
  • Uses pay for data transfer jobs
  • Use cases: large data cloud migrations, DC decommissions, disaster recovery
  • If it takes more than a week to transfer over the network the data, it probably would be recommended to use a Snowball device

Snowball Process

  1. Request a snowball device from AWS console for delivery
  2. Install the snowball client on the local server
  3. Connect the snowball device to the server and copy the files over using the client
  4. Shipt back the device when the all the necessary data is transferred to the device
  5. The data from the Snowball will be loaded into an S3 bucket
  6. Snowball is completely wiped

Snowball Edge

  • Snowball Edge adds computational capability to the device
  • It can have 100TB of capacity with either:
    • 24 vCPU (Storage optimized)
    • 52 vCPU & optional GPU (Compute optimized)
  • Supports a custom EC2 AMI so it can perform processing on the go
  • Supports custom Lambda functions
  • It is useful for pre-processing data while it is moving
  • Use cases: data migration, image collation, IoT capture, machine learning

Snowmobile

  • It is truck which can transfer exabytes of data
  • Each Snowmobile has 100PT of data storage capacity
  • Better than Snowball if more than 10PB of data should be transferred

Snowball into Glacier

  • Snowball can not import data directly to Glacier
  • We have to use Amazon S3 first, adn an S3 lifecycle policy