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AWS Snowcone

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Re: AWS Snowcone

#91

Post by buzzdenver »

t0mas88 wrote: post #30
aketchum wrote: post #13

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 shipp…

The speed is questionable in many countries where consumer internet connections already have 500mbit upload speed. But in the US I think bandwidth can be quite limited if you're not in a major city with fiber. The other big part is pricing. AWS charges $ 0.09 per GB for outbound transfer, so getting 8 TB of data out of AWS via the internet costs over $ 700. Doing it through Snowcone costs around $ 300 + shipping. Rea…

Can you transfer data out of AWS with Snowcone? I thought it was all transfer in, which is free.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#92

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #42
t0mas88 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For upload it doesn't make much sense. For download it's less than half the cost compared to AWS outbound bandwidth to the internet.

Holy hell. I'm looking at the pricing example on this page [0], and at $460 to transfer out 15 TB, you're telling me this is less than half the price of normal internet outbound traffic? I knew AWS bandwidth costs were absurd, but it wasn't until seeing those numbers that it really hit me just how absurd they are. 0: https://aws.amazon.com/snowcone/pricing/

Yeah, come for the cheap compute, stay for the expensive network costs... forever.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#93

Post by akersten »

Twirrim wrote: post #73
aketchum wrote: post #13

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 shipp…

I can speak to part of the rationality around Snowball: The old method of customers sending in hard disks and AWS importing them turned out to be _incredibly_ high touch. * Customers would put the wrong labels on the wrong drives. Given they were encrypted, and the label details were critical to matching the right disk with the right encryption key, that was a big issue. * Imports would routinely fail due to all sort…

Those are all really good points. I'm interested in hearing more about the NTFS quirks - what kind of issues were cropping up?

Now I'm really curious what filesystem Snowball wound up standardizing on, and how/if file metadata/ACLs/alternate data streams are maintained.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#94

Post by divbzero »

nevir wrote: post #88

I'm not sure whether I'm more annoyed by AWS' product naming scheme or the JS/Ruby/etc community's cutsy project names

I sometimes wonder if AWS product naming is driven by more than just cuteness or habit. Obscure names and acronyms could be an intentional strategy to tie users to AWS.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#95

Post by obviyus »

ThisIsTheWay wrote: post #69
aketchum wrote: post #13

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 shipp…

For a sense of scale, my company used an AWS Snowmobile to transfer 100PB of archived satellite imagery to AWS. More details here: https://blog.maxar.com/earth-intelligence/2017/digitalglobe-...

That was an excellent read. Thanks for sharing.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#96

Post by dcolkitt »

ThisIsTheWay wrote: post #69
aketchum wrote: post #13

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 shipp…

For a sense of scale, my company used an AWS Snowmobile to transfer 100PB of archived satellite imagery to AWS. More details here: https://blog.maxar.com/earth-intelligence/2017/digitalglobe-...

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

Re: AWS Snowcone

#97

Post by mmastrac »

What happened to the Google/AWS services where you could ship a raw HDD? It seems like they've both retired that service in favour of more expensive custom hardware.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#98

Post by aapeli »

I wonder if AWS are shooting themselves in the foot (if these things become very popular), by making the "Cloud" a physical, tangible thing. I think part of the lustre for some customers is that they don't know what they're paying for when they start a 2 vCPU EC2 instance and must think it's something crazy complex and special. Now having it on your desk in a tiny little box will make them wonder what they pay so much for.

The other thought I have is that maybe there's a market for shipping around bytes in mail boxes not just between a business and AWS, but just any people and businesses. I've seen B2 and Dropbox (I think) also have these "we'll ship you a drive" things, but maybe they'd outsource that for example to a third party who just did it really well and cheaply.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#99

Post by bithaze »

N_A_T_E wrote: post #60

All of this makes sense to me, except I have no idea how they fit 100tb of capacity in a box that small. Aren't HDDs maxing out around 16TB these days? They couldn't fit 6 drives in there.

I was curious about this too, but going back now to take a closer look at that screenshot, those are three other Snowball models listed in the table, not three more Snowcone models.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#100

Post by E5JBK7UJPT »

wmf wrote: post #35
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

At $6/day it's fairly expensive for non-temporary workloads.

Or you could pay the $2,000 lost device fee.
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