AWS Snowball User Guide
Using the Amazon S3 Adapter for Snowball
your workstation be a powerful computer. It should be able to meet high demands in
terms of processing, memory, and networking. For more information, see Workstation
Specifications (p. 93).
Before you start the adapter, you need the following information:
• The Snowball's IP address – Providing the IP address of the Snowball when you start the adapter tells
the adapter where to send your transferred data. You can get this IP address from the E Ink display on
the Snowball itself.
• The job's manifest file – The manifest file contains important information about the job and
permissions associated with it. Without it, you won't be able to access the Snowball. It's an encrypted
file that you can download after your job enters the WithCustomer status. The manifest is decrypted
by the unlock code. You can get the manifest file from the console, or programmatically from calling a
job management API action.
• The job's unlock code – The unlock code a string of 29 characters, including 4 dashes. It's used
to decrypt the manifest. You can get the unlock code from the AWS Snowball Management
Console (p. 22), or programmatically from the job management API.
• Your AWS credentials – Every interaction with the Snowball is signed with the AWS Signature Version
4 algorithm. For more information, see Signature Version 4 Signing Process. When you start the
Amazon S3 Adapter for Snowball, you specify the AWS credentials that you want to use to sign this
communication. By default, the adapter uses the credentials specified in the home directory/.aws/
credentials file, under the [default] profile. For more information on how this Signature Version 4
algorithm works locally with the Amazon S3 Adapter for Snowball, see Authorization with the Amazon
S3 API Adapter for Snowball (p. 85).
Once you have the preceding information, you're ready to start the adapter on your workstation. The
following procedure outlines this process.
To start the adapter
1. Open a terminal window on the workstation with the installed adapter.
2. Navigate to the directory where you installed the snowball-adapter-operating_system directory.
3. Navigate to the bin subdirectory.
4. Type the following command to start the adapter: ./snowball-adapter -i Snowball IP
address -m path to manifest file -u 29 character unlock code.
Note
If you don't specify any AWS credentials when starting the adapter, the default profile in the
home directory/.aws/credentials file is used.
The Amazon S3 Adapter for Snowball is now started on your workstation. Leave this terminal window
open while the adapter runs. If you're going to use the AWS CLI to transfer your data to the Snowball,
open another terminal window and run your AWS CLI commands from there.
Getting the Status of a Snowball Using the Adapter
You can get a Snowball’s status by initiating a HEAD request to the Amazon S3 Adapter for Snowball.
You receive the status response in the form of an XML document. The XML document includes storage
information, latency information, version numbers, and more.
You can't use the AWS CLI or any of the AWS SDKs to retrieve status in this. However, you can easily test
a HEAD request over the wire by running a curl command on the adapter, as in the following example.
curl -H "Authorization Header" -X HEAD http://192.0.2.0:8080
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