AWS Snowball - Prerequisites for Using AWS Snowball; Tools and Interfaces; Related Services; Are You a First-Time User of AWS Snowball

AWS Snowball User Guide
Prerequisites for Using AWS Snowball
Prerequisites for Using AWS Snowball
Before transferring data into Amazon S3 using Snowball, you should do the following:
• Create an AWS account and an administrator user in AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). For
more information, see Creating an IAM User for Snowball (p. 79).
• If you are importing data, do the following:
• Confirm that the files and folders to transfer are named according to the Object Key Naming
Guidelines for Amazon S3. Any files or folders with names that don't meet these guidelines won't be
imported into Amazon S3.
• Plan what data you want to import into Amazon S3. For more information, see How to Transfer
Petabytes of Data Efficiently (p. 36).
• If you are exporting data, do the following:
• Understand what data will be exported when you create your job. For more information, see Using
Export Ranges (p. 40).
• For any files with a colon (:) in the file name, change the file names in Amazon S3 before you create
the export job to get these files. Files with a colon in the file name fail export to Microsoft Windows
Server.
Tools and Interfaces
Snowball uses the AWS Snowball Management Console and the job management API for creating and
managing jobs. To perform data transfers on the Snowball appliance locally, use the Snowball client or
the Amazon S3 Adapter for Snowball. To learn more about using these in detail, see the following topics:
• Using the AWS Snowball Management Console (p. 40)
• Using an AWS Snowball Appliance (p. 45)
• Transferring Data with a Snowball (p. 51)
We also recommend that you check out the job management API for AWS Snowball. For more
information, see AWS Snowball API Reference.
Services Related to AWS Snowball
This guide assumes that you are an Amazon S3 user.
Are You a First-Time User of AWS Snowball?
If you are a first-time user of the Snowball service with the Snowball appliance, we recommend that you
read the following sections in order:
1. To learn more about the different types of jobs, see Jobs for Standard Snowball Appliances (p. 11).
2. For an end-to-end overview of how Snowball works with the Snowball appliance, see How AWS
Snowball Works with the Standard Snowball Appliance (p. 6).
3. When you're ready to get started, see Getting Started with AWS Snowball (p. 16).
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