AWS Data Transfer
2 min readFeb 22, 2021
This is part of a blog series giving a high level overview of the different services examined on the AWS Solution Architect Associate exam, to view the whole series click here.
Data Sync
- Data transfer service for moving large amounts of data into AWS.
- Typically use it at an on-premise data center but can also be used to move data between AWS storage services.
- Automates, simplifies and accelerates the movement of data
- Has built in security capabilities e.g. encryption in transit
- You would install AWS Data Sync Agent on a server that connects you to a file system — it then copies data and writes to AWS.
- Can connect with S3, EFS or FSX
Snowball
- Physical device used for petabyte-scale data transport that can securely transfer large amounts of data in and out of AWS
- Addresses a lot of the common challenges that typically comes with with large-scale data transfers, including high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns.
- Is very secure — has multiple layers of security, is tamper resistant and once the transfer is complete everything is completely wiped from the snowball device.
- Comes in two sizes; 50TB & 80TB
Snowball Edge
- Is a 100TB data transfer device.
- Snowball Edge has both storage and compute capabilities.
- It supports specific Amazon EC2 instance types and AWS Lambda functions.
- Secure as data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
- Can be used as a temporary storage tier for large local datasets or support local workloads in remote offline locations.
SnowMobile
- Is a 45 foot long container pulled by a truck that is an exabyte-scale data transfer service for moving extremely large amounts of data to AWS
- Can transfer 100PB per snowmobile
- Can be used for complete datacenter migrations and can import to S3
- Fast, secure and cost effective
