Aws Snowball FAQs | Amazon Web Services Flashcards
The original Snowball devices were transitioned out of service and Snowball Edge Storage Optimized are now the primary devices used for data transfer.
Q: What happened with the original 50 TB and 80 TB AWS Snowball devices?
No. For data transfer needs now, please select the Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices.
Q: Can I still order the original Snowball 50 TB and 80 TB devices?
AWS Snowball now refers to the service overall, and Snowball Edge are the current types of devices that the service uses – sometimes referred to generically as AWS Snowball devices. Originally, early Snowball hardware designs were for data transport only. Snowball Edge has the additional capability to run computing locally, even when there is no network connection available.
Q: What is the difference between Snowball Edge and Snowball?
Snowball Edge Storage Optimized is the optimal choice if you need to securely and quickly transfer dozens of terabytes to petabytes of data to AWS. It is also a good fit for running general purpose analysis such as IoT data aggregation and transformation. It provides up to 80 TB of usable HDD storage, 40 vCPUs, 1 TB of SATA SSD storage, and up to 40 Gb network connectivity to address large scale data transfer and pre-processing use cases. We recommend using Snowball Edge Compute Optimized for use cases that require access to powerful compute and high-speed storage for data processing before transferring it into AWS. It features 52 vCPUs, 7.68 TB of NVMe SSD, and up to 100 Gb networking to run applications such as high-resolution video processing, advanced IoT data analytics, and real-time optimization of machine learning models in environments with limited connectivity. For more details, see the documentation.
Q: What is the difference between the Snowball Edge Storage Optimized and Snowball Edge Compute Optimized options?
No. Snowball Edge is intended to serve as a data transport solution for moving high volumes of data into and out of a designated AWS Region. For use cases that require data transfer between AWS Regions, we recommend using S3 Cross-Region Replication as an alternative.
Q. Can I use Snowball Edge to migrate data from one AWS Region to another AWS Region?
You can transfer virtually any amount of data with Snowball Edge, from a few terabytes to many petabytes. You can transfer up to approximately 80 TB with a single Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device and can transfer even larger data sets with multiple devices, either in parallel, or sequentially.
Q: How much data can I transfer using Snowball Edge?
Data transfer speed is affected by a number of factors including local network speed, file size, and the speed at which data can be read from your local servers. The end-to-end time to transfer up to 80 TB of data into AWS with Snowball Edge is approximately one week, including the usual shipping and handling time in AWS data centers.
Q: How long does it take to transfer my data?
Snowball Edge devices must be returned within 360 days of the Snowball Edge’s preparation.
Q: How long can I have a Snowball Edge for a specific job?
Please see the AWS Snowball Features page for feature details and the Snowball Edge documentation page for a complete list of hardware specs, including network connections, thermal and power requirements, decibel output, and dimensions.
Q: What are the specifications of the Snowball Edge devices?
Some Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices – used for compute jobs currently – include a 10GBase-T network connection, 10/25Gb SFP28 and 40Gb QSFP+ copper, and optical networking for fast data transfer rates. Some Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices – used for data transfer jobs currently – include a 10GBase-T network connection, 10/25Gb SFP28 and 100Gb QSFP+ copper.
Q: What network interfaces does Snowball Edge support?
As a default, Snowball Edge uses two-day shipping by UPS. You can choose expedited shipping if your jobs are time-sensitive.
Q: What is the Snowball Edge default shipping option? Can I choose expedited shipping?
Yes, Lambda functions are hosted and can be executed on Snowball Edge in response to data storage events.
Q: Does Snowball Edge support Lambda functions?
Lambda functions are hosted locally on Snowball Edge. As data is written to your appliance, Lambda functions can be triggered to act on that data. In the same way as they act in AWS, Lambda functions can call other services, update objects, or make other changes.
Q: How do Lambda functions work on Snowball Edge?
AWS Lambda is a good choice for new applications that want to take advantage of the serverless computing model in AWS and want to run the same applications on the device. Amazon EC2 instances are a good choice when you have existing applications that you would like to run on the device for data pre-processing or when refactoring your existing applications to the serverless model isn’t desirable.
Q: How should I choose between Amazon EC2 compute instances and AWS Lambda functions for my compute needs?
The GPU option on AWS Snowball Edge Compute Optimized comes with SBE-G instances that can take advantage of the onboard GPU for accelerating the application performance. After receiving the device, select the option to use the SBE-G instance in order to use the on-board GPU with your application.
Q: How can I use the GPU with AWS Snowball Edge’s SBE instances?
You should use the EC2 compatible instances when you have an application running on the edge that is managed and deployed as a virtual machine (an Amazon Machine Image, or AMI).
Q: When should I use the EC2 compatible instances on AWS Snowball Edge?
With a Snowball Edge cluster, you increase local storage durability and scalability. Clustering Snowballs creates durable, scalable, S3 compatible local storage. Data can be shipped to AWS by swapping Snowballs in and out of the cluster seamlessly. Snowball Edge clusters allow you to scale your local storage capacity up or down depending on your requirements by adding or removing appliances, eliminating the need to buy expensive hardware.
Q: When would I consider clustering Snowball Edge devices together?
You can enable and provision Amazon EC2 AMIs or Lambda functions during AWS Snowball Edge job creation using either the AWS Console, AWS Snowball SDK, or AWS CLI.
Q: How do I get started with local computing on Snowball Edge?
Yes. AWS Snowball Edge provides an Amazon EC2-compatible endpoint that can be used to start, stop, and manage your instances on AWS Snowball Edge. This endpoint is compatible with the AWS CLI and AWS SDK.
Q: Can I use existing Amazon EC2 APIs to start, stop, and manage instances on the device?
The Amazon EC2 endpoint running on AWS Snowball Edge, provides a set of EC2 features that customers would find most useful for edge computing scenarios. This includes APIs to run, terminate, and describe your installed AMIs and running instances. Snowball Edge also supports block storage for EC2 images, which is managed using a set of the Amazon EBS API commands.
Q: What Amazon EC2 features does AWS Snowball Edge support?
No. At this time, you cannot use an existing EBS volume with AWS Snowball Edge, however, Snowball Edge does offer block storage volumes, which are managed with an EBS-compatible API.
Q: Can I use an existing Amazon EBS volume with AWS Snowball Edge?
To run instances, provide the AMI IDs during job creation and the images come pre-installed when the device is shipped to you.
Q: What steps do I need to take to run Amazon EC2 instances on AWS Snowball Edge?
Yes. You can import or export your KVM/VMware images to AMIs using the EC2 VM Import/Export service. Refer to the VM Import/Export documentation for more details.
Q: Can I convert my images from other hypervisors to AMIs and vice versa?
Amazon EC2 on Snowball Edge provides default support for a variety of free-to-use operating systems (OS) like Ubuntu and CentOS. They will appear as AMI’s that can be loaded onto Snowball Edge without any modification. To run other OSes that require licenses on Snowball Edge EC2 instances, you must provide your own license, and then export the AMI using Amazon EC2 VM Import/Export (VMIE).
Q: What operating systems can I run using this feature?
SBE1 instances feature up to 40 vCPUs, ephemeral instance storage for root volumes, and 32GB of memory, and are designed to support edge applications, such as IoT sensor data collection, image compression, data collection, and machine learning. SBE1 instances can also use Snowball Edge SATA SSD and HDD block storage for persistent volumes.
Q: What kind of workloads can I run on SBE1 and SBE-C instances?
AMIs that run on the C5 instance type in AWS are compatible with SBE1 instances available on AWS Snowball Edge Storage Optimized in the vast majority of cases. We recommend that you first test your applications in the C5 instance type to ensure they can be run on the Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device.
Q: How do I ensure that my AMIs are compatible to run on EC2-compatible instances on AWS Snowball Edge?
Yes. You can run multiple instances on a device as long as the total resources used across all instances are within the limits for your Snowball Edge device.
Q: Can I install more than one instance on a device?
All the EC2 compatible instances can run on each node of an AWS Snowball Edge cluster. When you provision an AWS Snowball Edge cluster using the AWS Console, you can provide details for instances to run on each node of the cluster, for example, the AMI you want to run and the instance type and size you want to use. Nodes can use the same or different AMIs across each node in a cluster. Q: How do I launch an instance manually?
Q: How do I use SBE1, SBE-C, and SBE-G instances on an AWS Snowball Edge cluster?
Each AMI has an AMI ID associated with it. You can use run-instance command to start the instance by providing this ID. Running this command returns an instance-id value that can be used to manage this instance.
Q: How do I launch an instance manually?
You can check the status of all the images that are installed on the device using the describe-images command. To see the active instances of instances running on the device, you can use the describe-instance-status command.
Q: How do I manage the instances on AWS Snowball Edge?
You can terminate a running instance using the terminate-instance command.
Q: How do I terminate an existing instance?
You are responsible for licensing any software that you run on your instance. Specifically, for Windows operating systems, you can bring your existing license to the running instances on the device, by installing the licensed OS in your AMI in EC2, and then using VM Import/Export to load the AMI to your Snowball Edge device.
Q: How is software licensing handled with compute instances on AWS Snowball Edge?
You can run block storage on both Snowball Edge Compute Optimized and Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices. You attach block storage volumes to EC2 instances using a subset of Amazon EBS capabilities that enable you to configure and manage volumes for EC2 instances on Snowball Edge devices.
Q: What is block storage on AWS Snowball Edge?
Snowball Edge block storage provides performance-optimized SSD volumes (sbp1), and capacity-optimized HDD volumes (sbg1), to meet IOPS and throughput requirements for a wide-variety of data processing and data collection applications. Block storage volumes have a maximum size of 10 TB per volume, and you can attach up to 10 volumes to any EC2 instance on Snowball Edge.
Q: What are the types of block storage volumes I can use, and how much capacity can each volume type use?
By default, all Snowball Edge devices are now shipped with the block storage feature. Once you unlock the device you can use AWS CLI or SDK to create volumes and attach them to an Amazon EC2 instance. You can attach multiple volumes to each EC2 instance, however, a single volume can only be attached to a single instance at any time.
Q: How do I get started with block storage on Snowball Edge?
Snowball Edge block storage has different performance, availability, and durability characteristics than Amazon EBS volumes. Also, it provides only a subset of Amazon EBS capabilities. For example, snapshot functionality is not currently supported on Snowball Edge block storage. Please see Snowball Edge’s technical documentation for a complete list of supported APIs.
Q: How is Snowball Edge block storage different from Amazon EBS?
To interact with block storage on SBE, you can use create, delete, attach, detach, and describe volumes EBS APIs. Please see Snowball Edge’s technical documentation for a complete list of supported APIs.
Q: Which Amazon EBS APIs does SBE block storage support?
Any Amazon Machine Image (AMI) running on Snowball Edge can access up to 10 block storage volumes at once. Generic AMIs provided by AWS and custom AMIs can access any block storage volume. There are no special requirements to make the block storage volumes work. However, certain operating systems perform better with specific drivers. Please see Snowball Edge’s technical documentation for details.
Q: Which Amazon Machine Images can I use on Snowball Edge to utilize block storage?
Volumes created on a single Snowball Edge are only accessible to the EC2 instances running on that device.
Q: Can the volumes on one device be accessible to Amazon EC2 instances running on another device?
You can use describe-device command from the Snowball client to monitor how much block storage is been used on the device. When you create a volume, all of the storage capacity requested is allocated to it based on the available capacity.
Q: How can we monitor storage capacity used by various volumes?
Not directly, no. Data on block storage volumes on Snowball Edge is deleted when the device returns to AWS. If you wish to preserve data in block storage volumes, you must copy the data into the Amazon S3 compatible storage on Snowball Edge. This data will then be copied into your S3 bucket when the device returns to AWS.
Q: Can I transfer data stored on block storage to Amazon EBS volumes in the cloud?
Yes, you can use the Amazon S3-compatible object storage, and the Snowball Edge block storage on the same device. The object storage and block storage used for sbg1 volumes share the same HDD capacity. The underlying storage features work together so that an increase in I/O demand for block or object storage does not impede the availability and performance of the other.
Q: Can I operate object and block storage on the same device?
No, you add volumes to your Amazon EC2 instances after you have received the device.
Q: Do I need to configure volumes or any storage resources when ordering my Snowball Edge from the AWS Console?
No. You can dynamically add or remove volumes and objects based on your application needs.
Q: Do I need to allocate storage resources on the device between block and object storage?
Snowball Edge is designed with security in mind for the most sensitive data. All data written into block volumes is encrypted by keys provided by you through AWS Key Management Service (KMS). All volumes are encrypted using the same keys selected during Snowball Edge job creation. The keys are not permanently stored on the device and are erased after loss of power.
Q: Are the volumes encrypted by default?
Additional volumes attached using the block storage offer up to 10 times higher performance compared to the root volumes. We recommended you use relatively smaller root volumes, and create additional block storage volumes for storing data for your Amazon EC2 applications. Please see Snowball Edge’s technical documentation for performance best practices, and recommended drivers.
Q: What are best practices to achieve optimum performance with Snowball Edge block storage?
Check the Regional Service Availability pages for the latest information.
Q: In what regions are Snowball Edge available?
No. Snowball Edge devices are designed to be requested and used within a single AWS region. It may not be requested from one region and returned to another. Snowball Edge devices used for imports or exports from an AWS region in the EU may be used with any of the 28 EU countries. Check the Regional Service Availability pages for the latest information.
Q: Can a Snowball Edge be shipped to an alternate AWS region?
Snowball Edge encrypts all data with 256-bit encryption. You manage your encryption keys by using the AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS). Your keys are never stored on the device and all memory is erased when it is disconnected and returned to AWS.
Q: Does Snowball Edge encrypt my data?
In addition to using a tamper-resistant enclosure, Snowball Edge uses industry-standard Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) designed to detect any unauthorized modifications to the hardware, firmware, or software. AWS visually and cryptographically inspects every device for any signs of tampering and to verify that no changes were detected by the TPM.
Q: How does Snowball Edge physically secure my data?
Snowball Edge uses an innovative, E Ink shipping label designed to ensure the device is automatically sent to the correct AWS facility. When you have completed your data transfer job, you can track it by using Amazon SNS generated text messages or emails, and the console.
Q: Is there a way to easily track my data transfer jobs?
Yes. To receive a history of Snowball API calls made on your account, you simply turn on CloudTrail in the AWS Management Console; The following API calls in Snowball are not recorded and delivered: DescribeAddress (in response), CreateAddress (in request), DescribeAddresses (in response).
Q: Can I get a history of Snowball API calls made on my account for security analysis and operational troubleshooting purposes?
After you have connected and activated the Snowball Edge, you can transfer data from local sources to the device through the S3-compatible endpoint or the NFS file interface, both available on the device. You can also use the Snowball client to copy data. To learn more, please refer to the Snowball Edge documentation.
Q: How do I transfer my data to the Snowball Edge?
When the data transfer job is complete, the E Ink display on the Snowball Edge automatically updates the return shipping label to indicate the correct AWS facility to ship to. Just drop off the Snowball Edge at the nearest UPS and you're all set. You can track the status of your transfer job through Amazon SNS generated text messages or emails, or directly in the AWS Management Console.
Q: What do I do when the data has been transferred to the Snowball Edge?
In addition to the Export job fees detailed on our pricing page, you will also be charged all fees incurred to retrieve your data from Amazon S3.
Q: What does it cost to export my data?
We typically start exporting your data within 24 hours of receiving your request, and exporting data can take as long as a week. Once the job is complete and the device is ready, we ship it to you using the shipping options you selected when you created the job.
Q: How quickly can I access my exported data?
Yes. However, the task automation features are available for only Snow Family devices ordered after AWS OpsHub launched on April 16, 2020. All other functionality will be available for all devices, including those ordered before AWS OpsHub launched.
Q: Can I use AWS OpsHub with a Snow Family device that I ordered before AWS OpsHub launched?
You use AWS OpsHub to manage and operate your AWS Snow Family devices and the AWS services that run on them. AWS OpsHub is an application that runs on a local client machine, such as a laptop, and can operate in disconnected or connected environments. In contrast, you use the AWS Management Console to manage and operate the AWS services running in the cloud. The AWS Management Console is a web-based application that operates when you have a connection to the internet.
Q: When do I use AWS OpsHub compared to the AWS Management Console?
AWS OpsHub will automatically check for AWS OpsHub software updates when the client machine that AWS OpsHub is running on is connected to the internet. When there is a software update, you will be notified on the application and will be given the option to download and update the latest software. Additionally, you can visit the Snowball resources page and check for the latest version of AWS OpsHub.
Q: How do I keep my AWS OpsHub software up to date?
Yes. When you copy data to AWS Snow Family devices using AWS OpsHub, checksums are used to ensure that the data you copy to the device is the same as the original. Also, all data written to AWS Snow Family devices is encrypted by default.
Q: Does AWS OpsHub validate and encrypt the data I transfer to the AWS Snow Family devices?
Please see our AWS Snowball Edge pricing page for pricing details.
Q: How much does it cost to use Snowball Edge?
Snowball Edge transfers data on your behalf into AWS services such as Amazon S3. Standard AWS service charges apply. Data transferred IN to AWS does not incur any data transfer fees, and Standard Amazon S3 pricing fees apply for data stored in S3.
Q: How am I charged for Amazon S3 usage?
No, there is no additional charge for this feature.
Q: Is there any additional pricing for Snowball Edge block storage?
Devices are only available on a per-job pay-as-you-go basis, and are not available for purchase.
Q: Can I purchase a Snowball Edge device?
Yes. The Snowball Job Management API provides programmatic access to the job creation and management features of a Snowball or Snowball Edge. It is a simple, standards-based REST web service interface, designed to work with any Internet development environment.
Q: Does the Snowball Edge support API access?
The AWS Snowball Job Management API allows partners and customers to build custom integrations to manage the process of requesting Snowballs and communicating job status. The API provides a simple web service interface that you can use to create, list, update, and cancel jobs from anywhere on the web. Using this web service, developers can easily build applications that manage Snowball jobs. To learn more, please refer to AWS Snowball documentation.
Q: What can I do with the Snowball Job Management API?
The S3 SDK Adapter for Snowball provides an S3-compatible interface for reading and writing data on a Snowball or Snowball Edge.
Q: What is the S3 Adapter?
The S3 Adapter allows customers to help applications write data from file and non-file sources to S3 buckets on the Snowball or Snowball Edge device. It also includes interfaces to copy data with the same encryption as is available through the Snowball client. To learn more, please refer to the AWS Snowball documentation.
Q: What can I do with the S3 Adapter?
The Snowball Client is a turnkey tool that makes it easier to copy file-based data to Snowball. Customers who prefer a tighter integration can use the S3 Adapter to easily extend their existing applications and workflows to seamlessly integrate with Snowball.
Q: Why would I use the S3 Adapter rather than the Snowball Client?
The S3 Adapter writes data using the same advanced encryption mechanism that the Snowball Client provides.
Q: How is my data secured when I use the S3 Adapter?
The S3 Adapter communicates over REST which is language-agnostic.
Q: Which programming languages does the Snowball S3 Adapter support?