AWS Snowball User Guide
How It Works: Concepts
How Export Works
Each export job can use any number of Snowball appliances. After you create a job in the AWS Snowball
Management Console or the job management API, a listing operation starts in Amazon S3. This listing
operation splits your job into parts. Each job part can be up to about 80 TB in size, and each job part has
exactly one Snowball associated with it. After your job parts are created, your first job part enters the
Preparing Snowball status.
Soon after that, we start exporting your data onto a Snowball. Typically, exporting data takes one
business day. However, this process can take longer. Once the export is done, AWS gets the Snowball
ready for pickup by your region's carrier. When the Snowball arrives at your data center or office in a few
days, you’ll connect the Snowball to your network and transfer the data that you want exported to your
servers by using the Snowball client or the Amazon S3 Adapter for Snowball.
When you’re done transferring data, ship the Snowball back to AWS. Once we receive a returned
Snowball for your export job part, we perform a complete erasure of the Snowball. This erasure follows
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-88 standards. This step marks the
completion of that particular job part. If there are more job parts, the next job part now is prepared for
shipping.
Note
The listing operation is a function of Amazon S3. You are billed for it as you are for any Amazon
S3 operation, even if you cancel your export job.
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