In AWS, there are over a hundred different services, many of which most people have never heard of and probably never will use. In this post, I want to talk about one of those lesser-known services that might surprise you. It's something you'd need to know if you're aiming to pass an AWS certification exam.
Here's a scenario: "You have a large amount of data, and your boss wants it moved to AWS within two weeks. However, with your current internet speed, it would take over a month to upload it all. What do you do?" The correct answer will involve something called AWS Snowcone or Snowball.
Let me introduce you to the AWS Snow Family. These are essentially physical devices that Amazon will ship to you. After you receive them, you can connect them, load all your data onto the device, and then ship it back. AWS will then upload your data to S3 directly (through a faster connection, obviously).
There are two main types of devices (technically three, but we'll get to that later) – Snowcone and Snowball. They differ in size and capacity.
Think of Snowcone as a large external drive. It comes in two configurations: 8TB HDD or 14TB SSD. On the other hand, Snowball is much more powerful, with models that can go up to 210TB SSD, 104 vCPUs, and 416GB RAM. These devices are built to withstand harsh environmental conditions and can function in extreme scenarios. In fact, Snowball is often used not just for data transfer but as additional storage or even compute power in remote and less-connected environments.
The third device, which is now somewhat of a legend, was called Snowmobile. Imagine a truck pulling up to your data center. This truck was equipped with petabytes of storage, and you could load all your data onto it before it drove back to AWS. As of now, Snowmobile isn't mentioned much in AWS documentation anymore—perhaps because most companies that needed it have already migrated, or maybe the smaller Snowcone and Snowball devices are sufficient for most data transfer needs today.
These services are quite niche. Personally, I've never seen or heard of anyone using them. They're not available in all regions and carry a certain air of mystery.
Have you ever heard of someone using them? Let me know in the comments!
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