Announcing AWS Import/Export for Amazon EBS

Posted on: Jul 7, 2011

We’re excited to announce support for importing data into Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) using AWS Import/Export. AWS Import/Export accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS using portable storage devices for transport. Amazon EBS provides storage volumes for use with Amazon EC2 instances. With Import to Amazon EBS in the US East (Virginia) and US West (Northern California) regions, you can now quickly transfer data into Amazon EBS by shipping storage devices to AWS.

AWS Import/Export transfers your data off of storage devices into AWS by using Amazon’s high-speed internal network and bypassing the Internet. If you have large amounts of data to load and an Internet connection with limited bandwidth, the time required to prepare and ship a portable storage device to AWS can be a small percentage of the time it would take to transfer your data over the internet. If loading your data over the Internet would take more than a few days, you should consider using AWS Import/Export.

AWS Import/Export now supports importing data directly into Amazon EBS snapshots off of eSATA and USB storage devices, as well as internal SATA hard drives. Once loaded into an Amazon EBS snapshot, you can create a volume based on that snapshot and attach it to an Amazon EC2 instance, or you can share that snapshot with others.

Get started using AWS Import/Export today at http://aws.amazon.com/importexport.