Amazon Web Services – Cloud Data Migration Whitepaper May 2016
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more data than that, you can use multiple appliances. For Amazon S3, individual
files are loaded as objects and can range up to 5 TB in size. There is no limit to the
number of objects you can place in Amazon S3, and the aggregate total amount of
data that can be imported is virtually unlimited.
AWS transfers your data directly onto and off of AWS Snowball storage devices
using Amazon’s high-speed internal network, bypassing the Internet. For
datasets of significant size, AWS Snowball is often faster than Internet transfer is
and more cost-effective than upgrading your connectivity. AWS Snowball
supports importing data into and exporting data from Amazon S3 buckets. From
there, the data can be copied or moved to other AWS services such as Amazon
Elastic Block Store (EBS) and Amazon Glacier.
AWS Snowball is ideal for transferring large amounts of data, up to many
petabytes, in and out of the AWS cloud securely. This approach is effective,
especially in cases where you don’t want to make expensive upgrades to your
network infrastructure; if you frequently experience large backlogs of data; if you
are in a physically isolated environment; or if you are in an area where high-
speed Internet connections are not available or cost-prohibitive. In general, if
loading your data over the Internet would take a week or more, you should
consider using AWS Import/Export Snowball.
Common use cases include cloud migration, disaster recovery, data center
decommission, and content distribution. When you decommission a data center,
many steps are involved to make sure valuable data is not lost, and Snowball can
help ensure data is securely and cost-effectively transferred to AWS. In a content
distribution scenario, you might use Snowball appliances if you regularly receive
or need to share large amounts of data with clients, customers, or business
associates. Snowball appliances can be sent directly from AWS to client or
customer locations.
AWS Import/Export Snowball might not be the ideal solution if your data can be
transferred over the Internet in less than one week, or if your applications cannot
tolerate the offline transfer time.
With AWS Import/Export Snowball, as with most other AWS services, you pay
only for what you use. Snowball has three pricing components: a service fee (per
job), extra day charges as required (the first 10 days of onsite usage are free), and