AWS Snowball User Guide
Snowball Features
What Is an AWS Snowball Appliance?
AWS Snowball is a service that accelerates transferring large amounts of data into and out of AWS using
physical storage appliances, bypassing the Internet. Each AWS Snowball appliance type can transport
data at faster-than internet speeds. This transport is done by shipping the data in the appliances through
a regional carrier. The appliances are rugged shipping containers, complete with E Ink shipping labels.
With a Snowball, you can transfer hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of data between your on-premises
data centers and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). AWS Snowball uses Snowball appliances
and provides powerful interfaces that you can use to create jobs, transfer data, and track the status of
your jobs through to completion. By shipping your data in Snowballs, you can transfer large amounts
of data at a significantly faster rate than if you were transferring that data over the Internet, saving you
time and money.
Note
There are many options for transferring your data into AWS. Snowball is intended for
transferring large amounts of data. If you want to transfer less than 10 terabytes of data
between your on-premises data centers and Amazon S3, Snowball might not be your most
economical choice.
Snowball uses Snowball appliances shipped through your region's carrier. Each Snowball is protected
by AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and made physically rugged to secure and protect your
data while the Snowball is in transit. In the US regions, Snowballs come in two sizes: 50 TB and 80 TB. All
other regions have 80 TB Snowballs only.
Snowball Features
Snowball with the Snowball appliance has the following features:
• You can import and export data between your on-premises data storage locations and Amazon S3.
• Snowball has an 80 TB model available in all regions, and a 50 TB model only available in the US
regions.
• Encryption is enforced, protecting your data at rest and in physical transit.
• You don't have to buy or maintain your own hardware devices.
• You can manage your jobs through the AWS Snowball Management Console, or programmatically with
the job management API.
• You can perform local data transfers between your on-premises data center and a Snowball.
These transfers can be done through the Snowball client, a standalone downloadable client, or
programmatically using Amazon S3 REST API calls with the downloadable Amazon S3 Adapter for
Snowball. For more information, see Transferring Data with a Snowball (p. 51).
• The Snowball is its own shipping container, and its E Ink display changes to show your shipping label
when the Snowball is ready to ship. For more information, see Shipping Considerations for AWS
Snowball (p. 73).
• For a list of regions where the Snowball appliance is available, see AWS Snowball in the AWS General
Reference.
Note
Snowball doesn't support international shipping or shipping between regions outside of the US.
For more information on shipping restrictions, see Region-Based Shipping Restrictions (p. 74).
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