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Snow Family

Introduction​

  • Offline data migration to Simple Storage Service (S3)
  • Used when it takes a long time to transfer data over the network
  • Takes around 2 weeks to transfer the data
  • Snowball cannot import to Glacier directly (transfer to S3, configure a lifecycle policy to transition the data into Glacier)
  • Pay per data transfer job
  • Hardware devices for
    • Data Migration (between AWS & on-premise data center)
    • Edge Computing
  • Need to install OpsHub software on your computer to manage Snow Family devices

Devices​

  • Snowcone
    • 2 CPUs, 4GB RAM, wired or wireless access
    • 8 TB storage
    • USB-C power using a cord or the optional battery
    • Good for space-constrained environment
    • DataSync Agent is preinstalled
    • Does not support Storage Clustering
  • Snowball Edge
    • Compute Optimized
      • 52 vCPUs, 208 GB of RAM
      • 42 TB storage
      • Optional GPU (useful for video processing or machine learning)
      • Supports Storage Clustering
    • Storage Optimized
      • Up to 40 CPUs, 80 GB of RAM
      • 80 TB storage
      • Supports Storage Clustering (up to 15 nodes)
      • Transfer up to petabytes
  • Snowmobile
    • 100 PB storage
    • Used when transferring > 10PB
    • Transfer up to exabytes
    • Does not support Storage Clustering

Data Migration​

  • Provides block storage and Amazon S3-compatible object storage
  • Usage process
    • Request Snowball devices from the AWS console for delivery
    • Install the snowball client / AWS OpsHub on your servers
    • 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 S3 bucket
    • Snowball is completely wiped
  • Devices for data migration
    • Snowcone
    • Snowball Edge - Storage Optimized
    • Snowmobile

Edge Computing​

  • Process data while it's being created on an edge location (could be anything that doesn’t have internet or access to cloud)
  • Long-term deployment options for reduced cost (1 and 3 years discounted pricing)
  • Devices for edge computing
    • Snowcone
    • Snowball Edge
  • Can run EC2 Instances & AWS Lambda functions locally on Snow device (using AWS loT Greengrass)