Posted On: Jul 19, 2022
AWS Snowball Edge (SBE) Storage Optimized devices now support high performance Network File System (NFS) data-transfer operations in the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. With this launch, AWS GovCloud (US) customers can now transfer up to 80-TBs of data onto Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices through file or object interfaces. The file interface exposes a Network File System (NFS) mount point for each Amazon S3 bucket on your AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device. After mounting the file share, you can drag and drop files from your computer into S3 buckets on the Snowball Edge device.
Prior to this launch, file interface data transfer speeds were typically between 25 MB/s and 40 MB/s. For faster data transfer or large data sets, customers had to use an S3 adapter on Snow for transferring the data, which delivered data transfer rates between 250 MB/s and 400 MB/s. With the high performing NFS data-transfer capability, you can get similar data transfer speeds as the S3 adapter with the file interface on SBE devices. However, actual performance may vary based on multiple factors such as network speed, file size, data source performance, and tooling used.
To use this feature, place an order for a data import job and select a Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device in the AWS Snow Family management console. Next, select NFS in the data transfer mechanism option, and then select the appropriate S3 buckets for data transfer using NFS. Finally, select an S3 bucket that you can use in the field to load Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) to the SBE device.
For AWS GovCloud (US) customers, NFS data transfers are available for AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices ordered on or after July 19, 2022. This feature is available in all AWS Regions where AWS Snow Family is available, at no additional cost. To get started, log in to the AWS Snow Family console. To learn more, visit the AWS Snow Family documentation or product page.