AWS Snowball

Snowball is a data transport solution that allows you to bypass the internet. Snowball appliances (actual physical devices) are shipped to you for transfer. Snowball can import from and export to S3.

Import/Export

AWS Import/Export Disk accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of the AWS cloud using portable storage devices for transport. Using this service, you send your own storage devices to Amazon and transfer data directly onto and off using their internal network.

This service is deprecated; it's still available although Snowball is advised.

Snowball Types

Snowball

Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses secure appliances to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS. Using Snowball addresses common challenges with large-scale data transfers including high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns. Transferring data with Snowball is simple, fast, secure, and can be as little as one-fifth the cost of high-speed internet.

80TB snowball in all regions. Snowball uses multiple layers of security designed to protect your data including tamper-resistant enclusures, 256-bit encryption, and an industry-standard Trusted Platform Module (TPM) designed to ensure both security and full chain-of-custody of your data. Once the data transfer job has been processed and verified, AWS performs a software erasure of the Snowball appliance.

Snowball Edge

AWS Snowball Edge is a 100TB data transfer device with on-board storage and compute capabilities. You can use Snowball Edge to move large amounts of data into and out of AWS, as a temporary storage tier for large local datasets, or to support local workloads in remote or offline locations. For example, airline technicians might use Snowball Edge on a plane to collect data about how the engine is running. Even things like their lambda functions will work on the device. Once the plane lands things can be connected with AWS again. It's an AWS datacenter in a box.

Snowball Edge connects to your existing applications and infrastructure using standard storage interfaces, streamlining the data transfer process and minimizing setup and integration. Snowball Edge can cluster together to form a local storage tier and process your data on-premises, helping ensure your applications continue to run even when they are not able to access the cloud.

Snowmobile

AWS Snowmobile is an exabyte-scale data transfer service used to move extremely large amounts of data to AWS. You can transfer up to 100PB per Snowmobile, a 45-foot long ruggedized shipping container, pulled by a semi-trailer truck. Snowmobile makes it easy to move massive volumes of data to the cloud, including video libraries, image repositories, or even a complete data center migration. Transferring data with Snowmobile is secure, fast, and cost effective.