AWS Snowball | When to Use Snowball Flashcards
Can a Snowball be shipped to an alternate AWS region?
When to Use Snowball
AWS Snowball | Storage
No. Snowballs are designed to be requested and used within a single AWS region. It may not be requested from one region and returned to another. Snowball devices used for imports or exports from an AWS region in the EU may be used with any of the 28 EU countries.
When should I consider using Snowball instead of the Internet?
When to Use Snowball
AWS Snowball | Storage
Snowball is a strong choice for data transfer if you need to securely and quickly transfer terabytes to many petabytes of data to AWS. Snowball can also be the right choice if you don’t want to make expensive upgrades to your network infrastructure, if you frequently experience large backlogs of data, if you’re located in a physically isolated environment, or if you’re in an area where high-speed Internet connections are not available or cost prohibitive.
As a rule of thumb, if it takes more than one week to upload your data to AWS using the spare capacity of your existing Internet connection, then you should consider using Snowball. For example, following the guidelines in the table below, if you have a 100 Mb connection that you can solely dedicate to transferring your data and need to transfer 100 TB of data, it takes more than 100 days to complete data transfer over that connection. You can make the same transfer by using multiple Snowballs in about a week.
Available Internet Connection Theoretical Min. Number of Days to Transfer 100TB at 80% Network Utilization When to Consider AWS Snowball?
T3 (44.736Mbps) 269 days 2TB or more
100Mbps 120 days
5TB or more
1000Mbps 12 days
60TB or more
When should I consider using Snowball instead of AWS Direct Connect?
When to Use Snowball
AWS Snowball | Storage
AWS Direct Connect provides you with dedicated, fast connections from your premises to the AWS network. If you need to transfer large quantities of data to AWS on an ongoing basis, AWS Direct Connect might be the right choice.
Snowball can be a strong alternative to Direct Connect if you need to transfer data in large batches or as a one-time transfer, potentially from distributed locations. For these workloads, Snowball can be a simpler, more cost-effective option than setting up a new Direct Connect connection to transfer your data and then terminating the connection upon completion.
When should I consider using Snowball instead of AWS Import/Export Disk?
When to Use Snowball
AWS Snowball | Storage
Snowball provides a faster, simpler, and more cost-effective experience for most use cases when compared to AWS Import/Export Disk.
With Snowball, you don’t need to purchase any hardware or write any code to transfer your data. Each Snowball appliance can transfer as much as 80 TB of data and you can use multiple appliances in parallel for larger workloads. Snowball uses tamper-resistant enclosures, 256-bit encryption, and an industry-standard Trusted Platform Module (TPM) that is designed to ensure both security and full chain of custody for your data, and also to reduce management overhead involved with transferring data into or out of AWS.
You can create transfer jobs right from the AWS Management Console. When your transfer is complete and the appliance is ready to be returned, the E Ink shipping label will automatically update to indicate the correct AWS facility to ship to, and you can track the job status by using Amazon SNS, or text messages, or directly in the console.
