AWS Snowball User Guide
How It Works: Implementation
12.Your region's carrier returns the Snowball to AWS – While the carrier has the Snowball for shipping,
the status for the job becomes In transit to AWS.
13.AWS gets the Snowball – The Snowball arrives at AWS, and the status for your job becomes At AWS.
On average, it takes about a day for AWS to begin importing your data into Amazon S3.
14.AWS imports your data into Amazon S3 – When import starts, your job’s status changes to
Importing. The import can take a few days. At this point, if there are any complications or issues, we
contact you through email.
Once the import is complete, your job status becomes Completed, and a PDF file of your job
completion report becomes available for download from the AWS Snowball Management Console.
15.Your imported data now resides in Amazon S3 – With the import complete, the data that you
transferred is now in Amazon S3.
Now that you know how an import job works, you're ready to create your first job. For more information,
see Importing Data into Amazon S3 with AWS Snowball (p. 16).
For more information about the job management API for Snowball, see AWS Snowball API Reference.
End-to-End Export Implementation
1. Create an export job – Sign in to the AWS Snowball Management Console and create a job. This
process begins a listing operation in Amazon S3 to determine the amount of data to be transferred,
and also any optional ranges for objects within your buckets that your job will transfer. Once the
listing is complete, the AWS Snowball Management Console creates all the job parts that you'll need
for your export job. At this point, you can cancel your job if you need to.
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.
2. A Snowball is prepared for your job part – Soon after your job parts are created, your first job part
enters the Preparing Snowball status. For security purposes, data transfers must be completed
within 90 days of the Snowball being prepared. When the Snowball is prepared, the status changes
to Exporting. Typically, exporting takes one business day; however, this process can take longer. Once
the export is done, the job status becomes Preparing shipment, and AWS gets the Snowball ready for
pickup.
3. A Snowball is shipped to you by your region's carrier – The carrier takes over from here, and the
status of your job is now In transit to you. You can find your tracking number and a link to the
tracking website on the AWS Snowball Management Console. For information on who your region's
carrier is, see Shipping Carriers (p. 74).
4. Receive the Snowball – A few days later, the carrier delivers the Snowball to the address you provided
when you created the job, and the status of your first job part changes to Delivered to you. When the
Snowball arrives, you’ll notice that it didn’t arrive in a box, because the Snowball is its own shipping
container.
5. Get your credentials and download the Snowball client – Get ready to start transferring data by
getting your credentials, your job manifest, and the manifest's unlock code, and then downloading the
Snowball client.
• The Snowball client is the tool that you’ll use to manage the flow of data from the Snowball to your
on-premises data destination. You can download the Snowball client from the AWS Snowball Tools
Download page.
• The manifest is used to authenticate your access to the Snowball, and it is encrypted so that only
the unlock code can decrypt it. You can get the manifest from the AWS Snowball Management
Console when the Snowball is on-premises at your location.
• The unlock code is a 29-character code that also appears when you get your manifest. We
recommend that you write it down and keep it separate from the manifest to prevent unauthorized
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