AWS Import/Export Goes Global

AWS Import/Export is a fast and reliable alternative to sending large volumes of data across the internet. You can send us a blank storage device and we’ll copy the contents of one or more Amazon S3 buckets to it before shipping it back to you. Or, you can send us a storage device full of data and we’ll copy it to the S3 buckets of your choice.

Until now, this service was limited to US shipping addresses and to S3’s US Standard Region. We’ve lifted both of those restrictions; developers the world over now have access to AWS Import/Export. Here’s what’s new:

• Storage devices can now be shipped to an AWS address in the EU for use with S3’s EU (Ireland) Region.At this time, devices shipped to our AWS locations in the EU most originate from and be returned to an address within the European Union.
• Storage devices can be shipped from almost anywhere in the world to a specified AWS address in the US for data loads into and out of buckets in the US Standard Region. Previously, devices could only be shipped from and returned to addresses in the United States.

Customers will be responsible for paying duty and taxes for any shipment which crosses into or out of the United States and must include an AWS Import/Export Declaration Form as part of the job creation request.

Based in New Zealand, ZetaPrints is a dynamic image generator with a built-in web-to-print feature.They migrated to EC2 and S3 when the popularity of their OpenX and Magento soared to new heights very quickly. The ZetaPrints developers used the Import/Export feature to transfer a terabyte of data in to S3 when they migrated their system over to EC2 and S3. They told me that:

Moving about 1TB of data to AWS was easier than we thought. All it took was a $100 USB drive shipped to AWS Import/Export and 100 lines of code to copy files from S3 to an EBS volume. We went live only a few days later. It couldn’t be easier.

By the way, adding to the fun, Zetaprints also has a web service of its own, with a very powerful set of image generation and account management functions.

Many of our EU customers face regulatory concerns around the location of their data. Amazon S3 helps to alleviate these concerns by allowing objects to be stored exclusively in our EU (Ireland) Region. The EU (Ireland) Region also offers a high level of consistency for requests. The Region provides read-after-write consistency for PUTS of new objects in your Amazon S3 bucket and eventual consistency for overwrite PUTS and DELETES. This ensures that you are able to immediately retrieve any new objects that are PUT in your Amazon S3 bucket.

Putting it all together, the new Import/Export flexibility, the stronger consistency model, and the recent price reduction should make Amazon S3 an even more useful and cost-effective global storage solution.

Jeff;