Snowball Overview¶
- Physical data transport solution that helps moving TBs or PBs of data in or out of AWS
- Alternative to moving data over the network (and paying network fees)
- Secure, tamper resistant, uses AWS KMS (Key Management Service) 256 bit encryption
- Tracking using AWS SNS and text messages. E-ink shipping label.
- Pay per data transfer job
- Use cases: large data [[cloud migrations]], DC decommission, Disaster Recovery
- If it takes more than a week to transfer over the network, use Snowball devices!
Snowball Process¶
- Request snowball devices from the [[AWS Console]] for delivery
- Install the snowball client on your [[server]]s
- Connect the snowball to your servers and copy files using the client
- Ship back the device when you're done (goes to the right AWS facility)
- Data will be loaded into an AWS S3 Bucket
- Snowball is completely wiped
- Tracking is done using AWS SNS, text messages and the [[AWS Console]]
Snowball Edge¶
- Snowball Edges add computational capability to the devices
- 100 TB capacity with either:
- Storage optimised - 24 vCPU
- Compute optimised - 52 vCPU & optional GPU
- Supports a custom EC2 AMIs so you can perform processing on the go
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Supports custom AWS Lambda functions
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Very useful to [[pre-process]] the data while moving
- Use case: [[data migration]], [[image collation]], [[IoT capture]], [[machine learning]]
AWS Snowmobile¶
- Transfer exabytes of data
- Each Snowmobile has 100 PB of capacity (use multiple in parallel)
- Better than Snowball if you transfer more than 10 PB