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AWS Snowcone

aws.amazon.com

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Re: AWS Snowcone

#11

Post by txcwpalpha »

benatkin wrote: post #8
txcwpalpha wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link, instance types are: - snc1.micro, CPUs: 1, memory: 1 GiB - snc1.small, CPUs: 1, memory: 2 GiB - snc1.medium, CPUs: 2, memory: 4 GiB

The table says CPUs, not vCPUs. Unless they're using single threaded single core processors, I think snc1.medium would equal either at least 4 vCPUs. I don't think they use the term vCPU for Snowcone so in reality it has zero vCPUs. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instance...

Oops, you're right. I'll fix my comment.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#12

Post by ceejayoz »

lukevp wrote: post #3

Is this the beginning of mini self-hosted clouds where the orchestration happens in a web UI but the compute/storage is local? Like a cheap version of Azure Stack? I get that you can’t keep the snowcone, but if you could, it would be a little VM host with local storage on your LAN that could let you run everything internal.

It looks like you can keep the Snowcone. One of the screenshots offers this option:

> "Perform local compute and storage workloads, without transferring data. You can order multiple devices in a cluster for increased durability and storage capacity."

Re: AWS Snowcone

#13

Post by aketchum »

I must not interact with big enough data to understand, but what is the point of this? I have watched/read several of the Snow product descriptions from AWS and I am still not quite sure I understand the point.

It seems like a way to sync local big data to AWS cloud storage for data that is too large to realistically transfer via the internet. So is this simply a sneakernet external harddrive because physically shipping an 8TB hard drive has better bandwidth than using the internet?

I would love it if someone could explain a couple of use cases for the Snow family of products to someone that has never had to handle 100 GB of data much less terabytes.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#14

Post by laurentdc »

jackklika wrote: post #7

I think that local storage of personal data ("data most important to you") will be a huge trend in the next few years for both homes and offices, especially if they can back up data to other trusted devices (in other homes and offices of trusted people). As always the problem is going to be usability - the AWS ecosystem is not friendly to non-techies.

I don't mean to sound snarky but isn't "local storage of personal data" what off the shelf NAS devices (QNAP, Synology, WD..) have been doing for almost two decades?

Even the backup thing, last time I tried they all had some pretty simple UI built around a rsync fork

Re: AWS Snowcone

#15

Post by rattray »

Interesting. So you can launch an EC2 instance with 8TB storage in your closet, or handbag, or under the desk at your medical facility, or whatever. I gotta say, sounds kinda fun.

Maybe would be handy for serving video content etc on a local network?

Or if you have a network of video cameras not connected to the internet, use this for daily/weekly collection of recorded content?

Re: AWS Snowcone

#16

Post by notatoad »

jackklika wrote: post #7

I think that local storage of personal data ("data most important to you") will be a huge trend in the next few years for both homes and offices, especially if they can back up data to other trusted devices (in other homes and offices of trusted people). As always the problem is going to be usability - the AWS ecosystem is not friendly to non-techies.

> the AWS ecosystem is not friendly to non-techies.

nor is it supposed to be. AWS is tools to build end-consumer products, not an actual end-consumer product itself.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#17

Post by jjeaff »

lukevp wrote: post #3

Is this the beginning of mini self-hosted clouds where the orchestration happens in a web UI but the compute/storage is local? Like a cheap version of Azure Stack? I get that you can’t keep the snowcone, but if you could, it would be a little VM host with local storage on your LAN that could let you run everything internal.

I can't imagine that becoming more popular than just a drobo style device that runs its own software. Seems ridiculous to make your local hardware dependent on the cloud. (obviously this is common for iot devices but it seems that anything like this for enterprise or prosumer doesn't usually fly.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#20

Post by Aperocky »

jackklika wrote: post #7

I think that local storage of personal data ("data most important to you") will be a huge trend in the next few years for both homes and offices, especially if they can back up data to other trusted devices (in other homes and offices of trusted people). As always the problem is going to be usability - the AWS ecosystem is not friendly to non-techies.

I actually think it's not so unfriendly. I have a stock trader friend who keeps all of his transaction records in S3 buckets, and he's not a 'techie'.

It's akin to having an understanding in file system - just that it's in the cloud this time. I'm sure a lot of non-techie understand enough about file systems to work what they needed it to do. And the same goes for the cloud.

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