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AWS Snowcone

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Re: AWS Snowcone

#152
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main issues with NTFS would be the system either wouldn't be able to see the drive, or would fail to be able to read part of it. They were building up quite a repertoire of tricks to get things to read correctly, but it was almost impossible to safely automate.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

What was the premium of storing the data in S3 as opposed to keeping it in your own tape warehouse? Definitely curious about the cost benefits!

Is your tape library stored redundantly across multiple data centers?

Re: AWS Snowcone

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For real! Reminds me of this article... "A carrier pigeon with a cargo of microSD cards can transfer large amounts of data faster, and more cheaply, than just about any other method" Link: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/networks/pigeo...

This almost got me and then I looked at the date of publication.

If you're new to joke RFCs, I suggest reading up on RFC 3514, a suggestion that malicious IP packets should be required to set the high order bit of the IP fragment offset field, which is to be designated the "evil" bit. This significantly simplifies implementing effective network monitoring.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#155
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cool idea. I wonder how many re-uses a box like that would take to make it cost effective over the same amount of cardboard. Should be feasible I'd think.

If the cost to return the box is more than a cardboard box, its not feasible.

Not necessarily. If the box costs 10 times as much, but they come up with a way to use the box 12 times, it was worth it.

That won't work if the recipient doesn't have a need to mail something back, but for a use case where you expected most boxes would be shipped back (maybe a phone repair company?), it could absolutely make sense.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A residential cable connection realistically offers something like 25Mbps down/3Mbps up. That's 246 days to upload 8TB!

According to Speedtest.net [0], the average US internet speed is 138Mbps down/51Mbps up. That's certainly not amazing, but on average that's only ~2 weeks to upload 8 TB. I can certainly see where this makes more sense if you're below that average, though. 0: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index/united-states#fixed

Average is useless here, because upload is so very restricted on some connections, but not others.

The first google result for median says it was 60/5 two and a half years ago. If you can sustain 90% saturation that's 164 days. Over half a year at 80%.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#158

This must be where all the traded-in Kindle screens are going. I was surprised Amazon was willing to pay me $25 for my 7-year-old Kindle, but I guess it's cheaper than manufacturing new eInk displays. Maybe I'm a germophobe, but isn't it kind of gross that this thing is shipped in no container and then put on your desk?

What strikes me is that the e-ink screen could update during shipping. Seems like shippers would want to avoid that possibility.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#159

This must be where all the traded-in Kindle screens are going. I was surprised Amazon was willing to pay me $25 for my 7-year-old Kindle, but I guess it's cheaper than manufacturing new eInk displays. Maybe I'm a germophobe, but isn't it kind of gross that this thing is shipped in no container and then put on your desk?

Maybe I'm a germophobe, but isn't it kind of gross that this thing is shipped in no container and then put on your desk? How long do germs last on an e-ink display? I know on paper and cardboard and such it's not very long. From what I can remember, they die while still in the mail stream. If you're concerned, hit it with some Lysol or soap and water.

I think parent commenter isn't just worried about the e-ink display, but the general fact that the entire device itself is going to be sitting in dirty shipping containers, warehouses, trucks, etc without any kind of covering. I know I've gotten some shipments before that have stains of who-knows-what-liquid soaked into the cardboard.

I'm not a germophobe, but even so, this probably isn't a device you want to be handling while also eating a sandwich. Lysoling it is probably wise.

Re: AWS Snowcone

#160
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cool idea. I wonder how many re-uses a box like that would take to make it cost effective over the same amount of cardboard. Should be feasible I'd think.

If the cost to return the box is more than a cardboard box, its not feasible.

A lot of Amazon users get daily/weekly drop offs, and increasingly via Amazon’s own logistics.

Seems fairly trivial to have those drivers pick up last week’s carriers when they drop off this one’s.

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