AWS Snowball Documentation

AWS Snowball is available in two device types: Snowball Edge Compute Optimized with more computing capabilities, intended for higher performance workloads and Snowball Edge Storage Optimized with more storage, which is intended for large-scale data migrations and capacity-oriented workloads.

Snowball Edge devices are designed to feature high-speed network connections. Data encryption can be performed on the device itself, helping you enable a higher data throughput rate and shorter data transfer times.

AWS OpsHub is a complimentary application for managing AWS Snow Family Devices. The OpsHub graphical user interface (GUI) is designed to make it easy for you to set up and manage AWS Snowball devices, enabling you to rapidly deploy edge computing workloads and migrate data to the cloud, including when you don’t have an internet connection. You can install AWS OpsHub on a Windows, Mac, or Linux client machine, such as a laptop.

Snowball Edge Compute Optimized provides an optional GPU along with Amazon EC2 instances to help you accelerate an application’s performance in disconnected environments. Using the GPU option, you can run applications such as advanced machine learning and motion video analysis in environments with little or no connectivity.

You can create a storage cluster using multiple Snowball devices when running edge computing jobs for increased storage durability of on-premises applications. When creating a new job in the AWS Console, you can select the option to make a storage cluster. In the event of a device failure, a replacement device can be ordered easily through the Console. This functionality is available for local storage and compute jobs and is not enabled for data migration jobs or devices with Amazon EKS Anywhere enabled.

You can create an Amazon EKS Anywhere cluster using one or more Snowball devices for your Kubernetes deployments. When creating a new job in the Console, you can choose the number of devices you want in your Kubernetes cluster and to include Amazon EKS Anywhere on them.

You can use a Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device with AWS Storage Gateway Tape Gateway to migrate physical tape data to Amazon S3 Glacier Flexible Retrieval or Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive. You can retain your tape-based backup workflows and don’t need to use your network connection to AWS for data transfer. After your tape data is migrated to AWS, you can view your virtual tapes through the AWS Storage Gateway console and access data on them through a Tape Gateway that runs on premises as a virtual machine or hardware appliance or on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance on AWS. Tape Gateway may not be available for use with all Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices.

You can run block storage on both Snowball Edge Compute Optimized and Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices. You can attach block storage volumes to Amazon EC2 instances using a subset of the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) API that enable you to configure and manage volumes for EC2 instances on Snowball devices. This can make it easier for you to develop applications in EC2, and then run them in disconnected and remote locations.

Applications can work with Snowball Edge devices as a NFS mount point with supported NFS versions.

AWS Snowball Edge devices have computing resources to collect and process data at the edge. Devices are designed to run specific Amazon EC2 instances with processing and storage available to support your applications and AWS IoT Greengrass functions. During the ordering process, you can select your Amazon EC2 AMIs that you want to install on the device, including AMIs running IoT Greengrass. AWS can then load the AMIs onto the device and ship it to you.

Data transferred to AWS Snowball can be encrypted with encryption keys that you can manage with the AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

AWS Snowball Edge devices have a ruggedized case designed for durability and portability. The devices are each designed to be lightweight and moved by a single person.

AWS Snowball Edge devices feature a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) that is designed to provide a hardware root of trust. The TPM is also designed to provide interfaces to the trusted software stack during the measurements and verification of the boot environment integrity after the power is switched on, and before the Snowball Edge device is ready to be used. AWS also uses additional tamper inspection processes after each device is received back to the AWS Region.

AWS Snowball devices use an innovative, E Ink shipping label designed to direct the device to the correct AWS facility and aid in tracking. Once you have completed your data migration job, it can be tracked via Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), text messages, and via the AWS Console.

Once the data migration job has been processed, AWS performs steps designed to erase software on the Snowball Edge device.

For additional information about service controls, security features and functionalities, including, as applicable, information about storing, retrieving, modifying, restricting, and deleting data, please see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/index.html. This additional information does not form part of the Documentation for purposes of the AWS Customer Agreement available at http://aws.amazon.com/agreement, or other agreement between you and AWS governing your use of AWS’s services.