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Amazon Snowball

aws.amazon.com

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Re: Amazon Snowball

#21

Post by vvanders »

mpeg wrote: post #17

I'm curious about how they're going to approach this from the fraud perspective. This is a $200 charge for a device that has 50TB storage, which would probably cost you around $2000 to buy. There's people out there that will sign a contract under a fake name / address with a phone provider and sell the phones, and the way the providers fight against it usually by running credit checks and verifying address against th…

Couldn't you just put a hold for $2k and release it when the device is returned?

Re: Amazon Snowball

#22

Post by toomuchtodo »

vvanders wrote: post #21
mpeg wrote: post #17

I'm curious about how they're going to approach this from the fraud perspective. This is a $200 charge for a device that has 50TB storage, which would probably cost you around $2000 to buy. There's people out there that will sign a contract under a fake name / address with a phone provider and sell the phones, and the way the providers fight against it usually by running credit checks and verifying address against th…

Couldn't you just put a hold for $2k and release it when the device is returned?

Yes.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#23

Post by evanpw »

fensterblick wrote: post #15

Getting terabytes of data into AWS/Hotel California is great, but wish there was a way to get the data out just as quickly!

> AWS Import/Export Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses secure appliances to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#24

Post by devit »

As usual, the pricing is not very friendly, and apparently designed to lock your data into AWS or exploit your weak negotiating position once you buy in.

While you can send in 50TB for $200, taking the same 50TB out costs an additional $1500 charge (50000 * 0.03).

[assuming they are not transferring the data over the Internet, the cost to AWS should be the same or cheaper for reading]

Re: Amazon Snowball

#25

Post by scott_karana »

guelo wrote: post #12
msandford wrote: post #5

The XKCD about FedEx's bandwidth seems particularly appropriate: https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/

His MicroSD card calculations are off because it would take a month to insert an airplane-load of those cards one by one into some computer to copy them into your storage. Which also makes me wonder why this Snowball device only does Ethernet. Seems like it should have an eSATA port.

Maybe it'll be a 10GbE interface?

Re: Amazon Snowball

#26

Post by toomuchtodo »

wanderfowl wrote: post #8
jonkiddy wrote: post #6

An AWS version of a sneakernet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet

Yep, all I could think was "Wow, that's a good deal fancier than a station wagon full of tapes". Cloud backup companies have had similar services for a while now, but it's nice to see AWS adopting it.

I have to admit, while it makes for good storage lock-in, I was impressed that they only charge 3 cents/GB to get the data back out.

Someone else in this thread thought $1500 was expensive to get 50TB back out. If you use this for disaster recovery, you could get all of your data back onsite quickly for a very low (comparative) cost, versus trying to provision high speed connectivity.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#27

Post by mpeg »

phaer wrote: post #18
iancarroll wrote: post #9

Isn't this a bit risky? What happens if someone keeps it? 50TB is a lot more than $200.

It might not be the best idea to steal from someone who has your full name and credit card, which Amazon does for AWS customers as far as I know.

The way this usually goes is that you pay with a prepaid debit card (that doesn't verify name or address).

Then you get it shipped to a name and address that are not yours, and you intercept the package before it gets there.

It becomes even harder to trace if the name / address / card all match, for instance if you've taken out a credit card on your elderly neighbor's name

Re: Amazon Snowball

#29

Post by [deleted] »

silveira wrote: post #14
iancarroll wrote: post #9

Isn't this a bit risky? What happens if someone keeps it? 50TB is a lot more than $200.

"The data will be 256-bit encrypted on the host and stored on the appliance in encrypted form", key is stored in KMS, according to https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-importexport-snowball-t...

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Snowball

#30

Post by mpeg »

vvanders wrote: post #21
mpeg wrote: post #17

I'm curious about how they're going to approach this from the fraud perspective. This is a $200 charge for a device that has 50TB storage, which would probably cost you around $2000 to buy. There's people out there that will sign a contract under a fake name / address with a phone provider and sell the phones, and the way the providers fight against it usually by running credit checks and verifying address against th…

Couldn't you just put a hold for $2k and release it when the device is returned?

Yes, you could, the pricing page doesn't mention anything about it though, hence why I wonder.
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