3.10 Snowball

Background of Snowball -- AWS Import/Export Disk

AWS Import/Export Disk accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of the AWS cloud (S3) using portable storage devices for transport. AWS Import/Export Disk transfers your data directly onto and off of storage devices using Amazon's high-speed internal network and bypassing the Internet. Snowball is a kind of this AWS Import/Export Disk.

Snowball

Snowball is a PB scale data transport solution that uses secure appliances to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS. Snowball uses multiple layers of security designed to protect your data.

Snowball Edge

Snowball Edge is a 100TB data transfer device with on-board storage and compute capabilities. You can use Snowball Edge to move large amount of data into and out of AWS, as a temporary storage tier for large local datasets, or to support local workloads in remote or offline un-normal locations. It can be seen as a portable AWS data center, it has not only storage capability, but also computing capability, such as running a Lambda function.

Snowmobile

It is a trunk, for PB or EB scale of data. It is used to move extremely large amount of data to AWS. You can transfer up to 100 PB per Snowmobile currently. Snowmobile makes it easy to move massive volumes of data to the cloud, even a complete data center migration. Transferring data with Snowmobile is secure, fast and cost effective.

Exam tips

• Understand what Snowball is.

• Understand what Import Export is.

• Snowball can: Import to S3/Export from S3. (If your data is in Glacier, you need to restore your data to S3 firstly).