AWS Snow Family

AWS Snow Family offers a solution for moving or processing data without a reliable internet connection. It provides physical devices (Snowcone, Snowball, and Snowmobile) that can function offline in harsh environments. These devices come in various sizes, and some even have built-in computing power. With Snow Family, we can securely transport massive amounts of data (up to exabytes) to and from the AWS Cloud, even in remote locations. Moreover, AWS manages the devices and ensures they integrate seamlessly with the cloud security, monitoring, storage, and computing needs.

In this lesson, we will learn about the devices offered by the AWS Snow Family, how they work, and their benefits.

AWS Snow Family devices

The Snow Family offers a range of options depending on how much data we need to move and whether we require local processing capabilities. A detailed discussion of each device offered by AWS Snow Family and their features is given below.

Snowcone

Snowcone is a small, portable device from AWS designed for both processing data locally (edge computingEdge computing refers to processing and storing data closer to where it's generated.) and transferring it to the cloud. It’s built to be rugged and secure, making it suitable for harsh environments. Snowcone can collect data from sensors or other devices, process it locally on the device itself, and then transfer it to the AWS Cloud for further analysis or storage. We can either ship the Snowcone device back to AWS with the data stored on it for offline data transfer or use AWS DataSync to transfer the data over the internet.

There are two versions of Snowcone available:

• Snowcone: This version has 8 TB of hard disk drive (HDD) storage.

• Snowcone SSD: This version offers faster storage with 14 TB of solid-state drive (SSD) storage.