Skip to content

Pasted image 20221031104435.png

AWS Snow Family

Pasted image 20230531191203.png

TLDR

The Snow Familiy is a collection of hardware which can be used to transfer large amounts of data into or out aws. Alternatively this hardware can also be used as data storage and computing power in locations where there is not internet (Edge).

Solves

  • Massive data migrations (10 Tb - 1 PB)

Caveats

  • Snowball cannot import to Glacier directly
  • Must import to S3 first, then move to Glacier with a lifecycle policy.

Use cases

  • data migration
    • Snowcone
    • Snowball Edge
    • Snow mobile
  • Edge computing
    • Snowcone
    • Snowball Edge

Data migration

  • Used when network lines are not fast enough (TBS and PBS)
  • recommended if data migration takes more than one week

Step by Step

  • Request a device from AWS
  • Install ops software on your servers
  • Use the client and hardware
  • Ship back
  • Snow device is wiped

Devices

Snowball Edge

  • big box to move tb or Petabytes of data in and out of AWS
  • large data cloud migrations, decommission a data center, disaster recovery
  • pay per job
  • provide block or S3 compatible storage
  • cluster up to 15 devices (like 1 PB)

Storage optimized

  • 80 TB of HDD

Compute optimized

  • 42 TB of HDD or 28Tb NVMe

Snowcone

  • Smaller Snowball
  • Snowcone 8TBs of storage
  • Snowcone SSD - 14 TB of SSD
  • fits on top of a drone
  • can transfer via network as well (collect offline transfer online)
  • can be sent back to AWS offline or connect to internet and use DataSync

Snowmobile

  • truck to transfer data
  • Each 100 PB of data
  • high security, temp controlled, GPS, 24/7 video surveillance
  • use when transferring more than 10 PB Pasted image 20230530201554.png

Edge Computing

  • process on edge location
    • a truck on the road
    • a ship on the sea
    • a mining station underground
  • No internet access
  • preprocess
  • All snow family can run ec2 instances & AWS lambda functions
    • using AWS IoT Green grass.
  • 1 – 3 years discounted pricing.

Use case

  • Preprocess data
  • Machine learning at the edge
  • Transcoding media streams.
  • Eventually, if needed, we can ship back the device to AWS (for transferring data e.g.,)

Snowcone & Snowcone SSD

  • 2 CPUs, 4gb of memory, wired or wireless access

Snowball Edge – Compute Optimized

  • runs EC2 or Lambda functions
  • 104 vCPUs, 416 GiB of RAM
  • Optional GPU (useful for video processing or machine learning)
  • 28 Tb NVMe or 42 TB HDD usable storage
  • allow pre-processing of data.

Storage optimized

  • up to 40 vCPUs, 80 GiB of Ram
  • Object storage clustering available.

Ops Hub

  • GUI Software to connect to snow devices
    • unlocking and configuring single or clustered devices
    • Launch compatible AWS services on your devices
    • transferring files
    • launching and managing instances running on snow family devices
    • monitor devices metrics
      • storage capacity
      • active instances on your device
  • edge computing
  • store data for transfer