So now let's talk about the AWS Snow Family.
So it represents a highly-secure, portable devices
that has two use cases within AWS.
Either it's used to collect and process data at the edge,
or to migrate data in and out of AWS.
So we have two use cases of data migration.
And for this, we have three different types
of devices within the Snow Family.
We have the Snowcone, the Snowball Edge, and the Snowmobile.
And for the second use case, edge computing,
we have the Snowcone and the Snowball Edge.
So we'll first tackle the data migration subject
and then the edge computing.
So why do we want to do data immigration
with the AWS Snow Family?
Well, if we look at the time it takes to transfer
a lot of data over the network,
it can take a lot of time.
So, for example, if we want to transfer 100 terabytes
over one gigabits per second network line,
it will take us 12 days to achieve it.
And so, obviously, if we do a petabyte,
it will take forever and so on.
So as we can see,
sometimes we just wanna do that to get to AWS fast.
And the challenges that sometimes
on top of having a small network transfer,
you have limited connectivity, limited bandwidth, sorry.
Transferring data over the network may cost you some money.
It's not free to use a network.
It could be that also the bandwidth is shared.
For example, if you download a video from AWS
and you download 10 terabytes of data,
maybe you're going to block your entire office,
because you're maximizing the bandwidth within your office.
And then maybe the connection is not stable enough,
so you have to retry and so on.
So all of these reasons make a case for Snow Family.
So the Snow Family are offline devices
that allow you to perform data migrations.
So AWS will send you an actual physical device
by the post office, and then you load your data onto it,
and then send it back to AWS.
So the rule of thumb is that if it takes more than a week
to transfer data over the network,
then you should use a Snowball device, for example.
So to really explain how that works, let's take an example.
If we wanted to directly upload a file into Amazon S3,
we have the clients send the data into Amazon S3.
Very easy, right?
But with the Snow Family, for example,
with a Snowball device,
the clients request this novel device.
We receive it via the post.
AWS will deliver the device to us.
We loaded the data directly onto the devices locally,
and then we ship back the device to AWS
into an AWS facility.
Then they will take the device,
and they will plug it into their own infrastructure.
And then the data will be imported or exported
based on what you wanna do to an Amazon S3 bucket,
and you're good to go.
So really it is a way to transfer data to AWS,
but through the physical, not the network route.
So now what sort of devices do we have?
We have the Snowball Edge,
and snowball edge is a huge box, as you can see,
and it is going to be used to move terabytes or petabytes
of data in and out of AWS.
It's going to be an alternative to moving data
over the network, how we've seen.
We're going to pay per data transfer job.
And the interface within the Snowball Edge
is going to provide a block storage
or Amazon S3-compatible object storage.
So we have two flavors for the Snowball Edge.
We have the Snowball Edge Storage Optimized,
which is going to give us 80 terabytes
of hardware of a hardware disc capacity,
which works for block volume
or S3-compatible object storage.
And we have the Snowball Edge Compute Optimized,
which is going to give us 42 terabytes of HDD capacity.
So, really, if we want to have more storage,
obviously, we want to get the flavor
that is called Snowball Edge Storage Optimized.
So the use case for a Snowball Edge
for data transfers so far
is to do a large data cloud migration
to decommission a data center,
or maybe to do disaster recovery
by backing up your data into AWS.
So that's for the first option.
The second option is called AWS Snowcone,
and Snowcone is a cute little name,
because it is a cute little thing.
This is a much smaller device, as we can see.
We can see an ethernet port on it.
So, Snowcone is much smaller than a Snowball Edge.
And this is a small portable computing, anywhere,
rugged, and secure, and it can withstand harsh environments.
So it can go in desert.
It can go in the water.
It's really, really light and secure.
So this device is going to be used for edge computing,
storage, and data transfer,
but, obviously, of much smaller size.
And as such, you can store eight terabytes of storage
on a Snowcone, so much less, about 10 times less
than this Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device.
So you should use a Snowcone where a Snowball does not fit.
So, for example, in space-constrained environments,
you can even put a Snowcone on top of a drone
if you wanted to.
You must provide your own battery and cables.
And it can be sent back to AWS offline,
or you can even connect it to the network,
and it will use AWS DataSync to send the data back
over the network.
So imagine you have a Snowcone into an environment
that doesn't have any network connectivity.
It will collect and collect and collect and collect data.
And then you go back home, you go to your data center.
You take the Snowcone and you plug it into your data center,
and automatically the data is being transferred to AWS,
or you can just send it back, again, offline to AWS,
but you have two options with the Snowcone.
And then Snowmobile is an actual truck.
So when they announced it,
they actually took a truck on stage
to show that it was an actual truck
that is going to transfer data.
And so with the Snowmobile,
you can transfer exabytes of data.
So one exabyte is 1,000 petabytes is one million terabytes.
And each snowmobile will have 100 petabytes of capacity.
So if you wanted to reach one exabyte of data,
you need to order 10 Snowmobiles.
It's high security, it's temperature controlled,
has GPS, 24/7 video surveillance,
so it's quite a secure way to transfer your data.
And it's a better use case than Snowball
if you start transferring more than 10 petabytes of data.
So, as a summary, for data immigration,
we have three options.
We have Snowcone, Snowball Edge, Snowmobile,
and each come with different storage capacities,
so eight terabytes, 80 terabytes, and 100 petabytes.
The migration size that's recommended by AWS
is Snowcone is up to 24 terabytes.
For a Snowball Edge, it's up to petabytes,
and it's offline, because you have to send it back to AWS.
And for Snowmobile, the use case is up to exabytes of data.
DataSync agent is pre-installed on a Snowcone,
because you can plug it to a network
and have DataSync send the data over the network
to AWS as well.
And for Snowball Edge, you can do storage clustering,
so you can put up to 15 Snowball Edges together
to increase the storage size.
Okay, so how do we use a Snow Family device?
Well, you request the device from the console for delivery,
and we'll see this in the hands-on.
Then we install the Snowball client,
or we use AWS OpsHub that we'll see in this lecture
on your servers.
Then we connect the Snowball to the servers
and start copying the files using the client.
Then we ship back the device when we're ready.
It will go straight to the right AWS facility
thanks to an E Ink marker,
and the data will be loaded onto an S3 bucket.
And then the Snowball will be completely wiped
according to the highest security measures.
So that's for the data migration.
And that was originally one and the only use case
for Snowball devices.
But the second use case now for the Snow Family
is called edge computing.
And so edge computing is when you process data
while it's being created at an edge location.
So what is an edge location?
Well, an edge location is anything
that really doesn't have internet,
or that is far away from a cloud.
So, for example, if you have a truck on the road,
or if you have a ship on the sea,
or a mining station underground,
all these things can be called edge locations,
because they can produce data,
but they may not necessarily have internet connectivity,
so, either a limited connectivity,
or no internet access, or no access to computing power.
And so you may still want to run computation data processing
at these locations.
And for this, we need edge computing.
And so to do edge computing,
we can order a Snowball Edge device or a Snowcone,
and have it embedded into these edge locations
and start doing edge computing.
So the use cases of edge computing is to preprocess data
to machine learning at the edge,
so without it going back to the cloud,
transcode media streams in advance,
and eventually, if need be,
if you need to transfer the data back into AWS,
you can ship back the device
for your Snowcone or your Snowball Edge.
So really you start processing the data very, very close
to where it's being created,
and then you ship it back to AWS.
So, for edge computing, what do we have?
We have the Snowcone, and it comes with two CPUs,
four gigabytes of memory, has wired or wireless access,
so WiFi.
It's powered by USB-C and an optional battery.
Then for Snowball Edge, it's compute optimized,
so we have two different flavors again.
So, the Compute Optimized one has 52 vCPUs,
200 gigabytes of RAM, and an optional GPU
if you want to do video processing or machine learning.
We have 42 terabytes of usable storage.
And for the Snowball Edge that is Storage Optimized,
we have 40 CPU, so less and 80 gigabytes of RAM,
so, again, less RAM as well.
We have objects storage clustering available
for the storage.
And all of these devices can run either EC2 instances
within them, or Lambda functions
using the service called AWS IoT Greengrass.
And if you do edge computing,
then you may want to have these devices in your facilities,
in your trucks, in your boats for a very long time.
And so, therefore, you have long-term deployment options
where you can get a discounted pricing
if you borrow these devices for one or three years.
Finally, for the Snow Family,
there is OpsHub.
So, historically, when you were using these devices,
you needed a CLI, so Command Line Interface tool,
to deal with them, and it was very, very difficult.
And so AWS recognizes that.
And so they've created OpsHub,
which is a software that you install
on your computer or laptop,
so it's not something you use on the cloud.
It's something that you have to download on your computer.
And then once it's connected, it's going to give you
a graphical interface to connect to your Snow devices
and configure them and use them, which is very, very handy.
So this is allows you to do unlocking
and configuring single or cluster devices,
transferring files, launching and managing instances,
so you see two instances running on Snow Family devices,
monitor device metrics,
and launch compatible AWS services on your devices,
for example, EC2 instances,
use DataSync or a Network File System.
So that's it for the Snow family.
I hope you liked it,
and I will see you in the next lecture.