AWS Snowball - Best Practices; Security Best Practices; Network Best Practices; Resource Best Practices

AWS Snowball User Guide
Security Best Practices
Best Practices for AWS Snowball
Following, you can find information to help you get the maximum benefit from and satisfaction with
AWS Snowball (Snowball).
Security Best Practices for AWS Snowball
Following are approaches that we recommend to promote security when using Snowball:
• If you notice anything that looks suspicious about the Snowball, don't connect it to your internal
network. Instead, contact AWS Support, and a new Snowball will be shipped to you.
• We recommend that you don't save a copy of the unlock code in the same location in the workstation
as the manifest for that job. Saving the unlock code and manifest separately helps prevent
unauthorized parties from gaining access to the Snowball. For example, you might take this approach:
First, save a copy of the manifest to the workstation. Then, email the unlock code to the AWS Identity
and Access Management (IAM) user to perform the data transfer from the workstation. This approach
limits access to the Snowball to individuals who have access to files saved on the workstation and also
that IAM user's email address.
• Whenever you transfer data between your on-premises data centers and a Snowball, logs are
automatically generated and saved to your workstation. These logs are saved in plaintext format
and can contain file name and path information for the files that you transfer. To protect this
potentially sensitive information, we strongly suggest that you delete these logs after the job that
the logs are associated with enters Completed status. For more information about logs, see Snowball
Logs (p. 64).
Network Best Practices for AWS Snowball
Following are approaches that we recommend for using Snowball with a network:
• Your workstation should be the local host for your data. For performance reasons, we don't
recommend reading files across a network when using Snowball to transfer data. If you must transfer
data across a network, batch the local cache before copying to the Snowball so the copy operation can
go as fast as possible.
• Because the workstation is considered to be the bottleneck for transferring data, we highly
recommend that your workstation be a powerful computer, able to meet high demands in terms of
processing, memory, and networking. For more information, see Workstation Specifications (p. 93).
• You can run simultaneous instances of the Snowball client in multiple terminals, each using the copy
operation to speed up your data transfer. For more information about using the Snowball client see
Commands for the Snowball Client (p. 56).
• To prevent corrupting your data, don't disconnect the Snowball or change its network settings while
transferring data.
• Files must be in a static state while being copied. Files that are modified while they are being
transferred are not imported into Amazon S3.
Resource Best Practices for AWS Snowball
Following are approaches that we recommend for working with Snowball and your data resources, along
with a few additional important points:
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