AWS Snowball is a highly secure, portable device designed to collect, process, and migrate data in and out of AWS efficiently. It is particularly useful when dealing with large-scale data transfers (e.g., petabytes of data) where network-based transfers are impractical due to limited bandwidth, high costs, or unstable connectivity.

Types of AWS Snowball Edge Devices

AWS offers two main types of Snowball Edge devices, each optimized for different use cases:

1. Edge Storage Optimized
   • Storage Capacity: 210 TB
   • Use Case: Large-scale data migration
2. Edge Compute Optimized
   • Storage Capacity: 28 TB
   • Use Case: Edge computing, running EC2 instances or Lambda functions

Use Case 1: Data Migration with Snowball

Transferring large amounts of data over a network can take a long time. For example:

• 100 TB of data over a 1 Gbps connection takes 12 days to transfer.
• Challenges:
  • Limited bandwidth
  • High network costs
  • Unstable connectivity

Solution: AWS Snowball

• AWS ships a physical Snowball device to your location.
• You load the data onto the device.
• You return the Snowball to AWS, where it is uploaded to Amazon S3.
• This method bypasses network limitations, making it ideal for petabyte-scale migrations.

Use Case 2: Edge Computing with Snowball

In remote environments where internet access is limited or unavailable, edge computing allows processing data on-site before transferring it to AWS.

Examples of Edge Computing Use Cases