What is snowcone and its uses

This recipe explains what is snowcone and its uses

What is snowcone and its uses?

AWS Snowcone weighs 4.5 pounds and comes with 8 terabytes of usable storage. It is small (9′′ long, 6′′ wide, and 3′′ tall) and rugged, and can be used in a variety of environments such as desktops, data centres, messenger bags, vehicles, and in conjunction with drones. Snowcone can run on either AC power or an optional battery, making it ideal for a wide range of applications where self-sufficiency is essential. The device enclosure is both tamper-evident and tamper-resistant, and it also employs a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to ensure data security and full chain-of-custody. The device encrypts data at rest and in transit with keys managed by AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and never stored on the device.

Snowcone, like other Snow Family devices, comes with an E Ink shipping label to ensure that the device is automatically sent to the correct AWS facility and to aid in tracking. It also has two CPUs, four gigabytes of memory, wired or wireless access, and USB-C power via a cord or an optional battery. You have enough compute power to launch EC2 instances and use AWS IoT Greengrass.

Snowcone can be used for data migration, content distribution, tactical edge computing, healthcare IoT, industrial IoT, transportation, logistics, and self-driving vehicle applications. You have the option of shipping data-laden devices to AWS for offline data transfer or using AWS DataSync for online data transfer.

Snowcone comes in two flavours:

    • Snowcone

Snowcone has two virtual CPUs, 4 GB of memory, and 8 TB of hard disc drive (HDD) storage.

    • Snowcone SSD

The Snowcone SSD has two vCPUs, 4 GB of memory, and 14 TB of SSD-based storage.

A Snowcone device with two CPUs and terabytes of storage can run edge computing workloads that use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances and securely store data

Snowcone devices are small (8.94" x 5.85" x 3.25" / 227 mm x 148.6 mm x 82.65 mm) and can be placed next to factory machinery to collect, format, and transport data back to AWS for storage and analysis. A Snowcone device weighs about 4.5 lbs. (2 kg), so it can be carried in a backpack, run on batteries, and collect sensor data via the Wi-Fi interface.

Snowcone devices include a file interface that supports Network File System (NFS). Snowcone devices use the NFS interface to transfer data from on-premises Windows, Linux, and macOS servers and file-based applications.

AWS Snowcone, like AWS Snowball, has multiple layers of security encryption capabilities. You can use either of these services to gather, process, and transfer data to AWS, as well as run edge computing workloads on Amazon EC2 instances. Snowcone is intended for data migration needs of tens of terabytes or more. It can be used in environments where Snowball Edge devices do not fit.

Use Cases

AWS Snowcone devices can be used for the following purposes:

• To collect data, process the data to gain immediate insight, and then transfer the data online to AWS for edge computing applications.

To send data generated continuously by sensors or machines online to AWS in a factory or other edge location.

To provide your partners and customers with media, scientific, or other content from AWS storage services.

To aggregate content by sending media, scientific, or other data from your edge locations to AWS.

For one-time data migration scenarios where your data is ready to be transferred, Snowcone offers a quick and low-cost way to ship the device back to AWS and transfer up to 8 TB or 14 TB of data to the AWS Cloud.

A Snowcone device can run on specified battery power for mobile deployments. The device can run on a battery for up to 6 hours with a light workload at 25% CPU usage. Data from wireless sensors can be collected using the Wi-Fi interface on your Snowcone device. Because an AWS Snowcone device is low power, portable, lightweight, and vibration resistant, it can be used in a wide range of remote and austere environments.

How AWS Snowcone Works

AWS Snowcone is a portable computing and data transfer device. To get started, use the AWS Management Console to request one or more Snowcone devices based on the amount of data you need to transfer and the compute performance required. The buckets, data, and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that you select are automatically configured, encrypted, and pre-installed on your devices. Before your devices are shipped to you, the AWS DataSync agent is also pre-installed.

Snowcone devices are typically delivered within 4-6 business days. To receive multiple AWS Snowcone devices, you must create a job order for each Snowcone device on the console.

When your device arrives, you connect it to your on-premises network and either manually or automatically configure the IP address using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). AWS OpsHub for Snow Family, a graphical user interface (GUI) application for managing your Snowcone device, must be downloaded and installed. It can be installed on any Windows or macOS client machine, including a laptop.

When you open AWS OpsHub and unlock the device, you'll see a dashboard with information about your device and its system metrics. With a few clicks in AWS OpsHub, you can then launch instances to deploy your edge applications or migrate your data to the device.

When your compute or data transfer job is finished and the device is ready to be returned, the E Ink shipping label updates the return address, ensuring that the Snowcone device is delivered to the correct AWS facility. When the device arrives, you can receive tracking information via Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) messages, generated texts and emails, or directly from the console.

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