What is AWS Snowball?
Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport service that utilizes secure appliances to transfer large amounts of data into and out of the AWS cloud. The service is designed around a suitcase-sized device that can rapidly and efficiently move data between on-premises locations and the AWS infrastructure. Customers initiate a job through the AWS Management Console, after which the appropriate Snowball device(s) are shipped to the specified site. Users then fill the device(s) with their data, which is then returned to AWS and automatically uploaded to the customer's S3 bucket. Typical end-to-end transfer times are around one week. Snowball is commonly employed for moving terabytes or petabytes of data for analytics, healthcare, life sciences, video, imaging, backup, and archive use cases, particularly as part of data center consolidation, tape replacement, or application migration projects
Highlights
- Petabyte-scale data transfer capability
- Secure, suitcase-sized appliance form factor
- Integrated with AWS Management Console for seamless job management