AWS Snowball (Edge)

Overview

• Evolution of original Snowball device

Main Differences

• Form factor
• Bigger capacity: 100 TB
• Better network connectivity:
  • 10 or 25 Gb SPF
  • 40 Gb QSPF+
  • 3G
  • WiFi

Clustering

• Multiple Snowballs constitute a cluster
• Treated as Network Attached Storage (NAS)
• Cannot be used to import/export data
  • on-premise storage only
• Redundancy
  • 45TB/100TB per node usable
  • Survives
    • 1 node crash (normal operation)
    • 2 node crash (read-only mode)

File interface

• Access via NFS
  • Preserves file metadata as object attributes
• Stored files can be access via AWS Storage Gateway
• Cannot be accessed via EFS

Storage Endpoints 

• S3
  • subset of REST: LIST, GET, PUT, DELETE, HEAD, MultiPart upload
• NFS

Local processing

• Embedded Greengrass Core (IoT) to run Lambda
• Lambda function pre-deployed on device
  • Python
  • Max 128 MB RAM
• Triggered on PutObject
• Use cases
  • filter, clean, analyze, track data

References

• https://aws.amazon.com/snowball-edge/faqs/