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Snow Family

🧊 What is AWS Snow Family?

The AWS Snow Family is a set of physical, rugged devices designed for:

  • Offline data migration to AWS

  • Edge computing in disconnected or bandwidth-limited environments

  • Tactical deployments in rugged or mobile scenarios

✅ Snow devices help transfer terabytes to exabytes of data securely and efficiently when using the internet isn’t feasible or practical.

🧬 Snow Family Devices Overview

Device Storage Capacity Use Case Ports / Power
Snowcone 8 TB usable Edge computing, drones, vehicles USB-C, battery-powered
Snowball Edge 42/80 TB usable Bulk data transfer, local compute RJ45, fiber, ruggedized
Snowmobile Up to 100 PB Data center migration 45-foot rugged truck

📦 1. AWS Snowcone

  • Smallest form factor

  • Weighs ~4.5 lbs (~2.1 kg)

  • Ideal for tight spaces, mobile deployments, or military use

  • Supports EC2, EBS, and AWS IoT Greengrass

✅ Can be battery-powered or powered via USB-C
✅ Supports offline and online data transfer via AWS OpsHub

📦 2. AWS Snowball Edge

Two variants:

Variant Storage (usable) Compute? Networking
Storage Optimized ~80 TB Basic 1/10/25 GbE
Compute Optimized ~42 TB Yes GPU option available

  • Supports EC2 AMIs, EBS, Lambda, and S3-compatible storage

  • Comes with Amazon S3 Adapter, AWS OpsHub, and CLI

  • Often used for disaster recovery, edge processing, machine learning, or shipboard computing

📦 3. AWS Snowmobile

  • 45-foot ruggedized shipping container on a truck

  • Transfers up to 100 PB per job

  • Ideal for massive data center migrations

  • Uses tamper-resistant enclosures, GPS tracking, 24/7 monitoring

🔒 Security Features

Feature Description
256-bit encryption All Snow devices encrypt data at rest
KMS integration Keys managed via AWS Key Management Service
Tamper resistance Snowball and Snowmobile detect physical tampering
Secure Erasure Cryptographic erasure after data upload

🧠 Use Cases

Scenario Why Snow Family?
🛳️ Shipboard or remote site data Transfer data without internet
🚁 Tactical military edge compute Secure, portable, rugged compute + storage
🌐 Slow or expensive internet Cheaper and faster than uploading 100s of TB over net
💽 Data center shutdown/migration Transfer 100 PB+ using Snowmobile
📉 Disaster recovery Backup or restore from cloud to edge via Snowball

🛠️ Workflow: How Snowball Data Transfer Works

  1. Create a job in AWS Snow console

  2. AWS ships a Snow device to you

  3. You copy data to device using aws snowball cp or AWS OpsHub

  4. Ship it back to AWS

  5. AWS ingests the data into S3

  6. Device is securely wiped

🔧 Tools for Working with Snow Devices

Tool Purpose
AWS OpsHub GUI for managing Snowcone/Snowball
Snowball CLI Local command-line utility for file transfers
Amazon S3 Adapter Mount Snowball as S3-compatible interface
SSH/EC2 Run apps on-device (if compute optimized)

📊 Pricing (as of 2024)

Device Pricing Basis
Snowcone ~$60 per job + $6/day usage
Snowball Edge ~$300/job + $30–60/day (varies)
Snowmobile Custom pricing (~$0.005–0.01 per GB)

🟨 Shipping charges are additional
🟨 Data transfer into AWS is free; outbound from AWS is charged

🌍 Region Support

  • Snow devices are available in most AWS regions

  • Snowmobile is only available in select large-scale enterprise regions

  • Check AWS Snowball region support

✅ TL;DR Summary

Feature Snowcone Snowball Edge Snowmobile
Storage Capacity ~8 TB 42–80 TB Up to 100 PB
Use Case Small edge apps Bulk ingest/compute Data center migration
Portability Handheld Rugged suitcase 45-foot truck
Compute Support Yes (EC2) Yes (Lambda, EC2) No
Security ✅ End-to-end encrypted, KMS managed
Offline Upload ✅ Yes for all

🔄 Snow Family vs DataSync vs Transfer Appliance

Feature Snow Family AWS DataSync AWS Transfer Family
Connection Offline + Online Online (NFS, SMB, S3) Online (FTP/SFTP)
Speed High offline throughput 10 Gbps over internet Up to 10K sessions
Use case Massive or disconnected Hybrid or medium-sized SFTP server replacement