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Amazon To Offer Sneakernet Services: Data Upload By Mail

Posted by timothy on from the those-are-some-big-sneakers dept.

blueshift_1 writes: If you have 50TB of data that you'd like to put on the S3 cloud, Amazon is releasing Snowball. It's basically a large grey box full of hard drives that Amazon will mail to you. Simply upload your files and mail it back — they will upload it for you. For $200 + shipping, it's at a pretty reasonable price point if you're tired of hosting your data and want to try and push that to AWS. ("Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." -Tanenbaum, Andrew S.)

12 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. It's been available for a while by Pete+(big-pete) · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's nice they've got an official box and all, but the service to send disks to Amazon has been there for a while (as a beta program).

    Here is a blog post from 2009 explaining the service.

    Of course, a nice official controlled and encrytped box is a far tidier way of doing things!

    -- Pete.

    --
    Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
    1. Re:It's been available for a while by willworkforbeer · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh, and those disks make a detour to the NSA on their way to Amazon. Very convenient, indeed.

      It was the shipping via Black Helicopter Express that gave it away.

      --
      Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
    2. Re:It's been available for a while by danceswithtrees · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Even without the detour, what are the security ramifications of connecting a foreign device to your network? Its from Amazon, they have an image to protect, but what if they get hacked or the packaged gets switched/tampered with en route? The device can silently start making its way around your network collecting data you didn't want to upload.

      I'll take off my aluminum Faraday beanie cap now.

  2. Re:Theft waiting to happen by hawguy · · Score: 5, Informative

    The boxes in which these hard drives ship will be obvious that they're from Amazon. It's an invitation to thieves to steal the boxes and the data on the hard drives. I can't understand why ANYONE would ship data of any value in this manner.

    The data is encrypted by the tool that copies data to the device. It doesn't seem like it would take too many thefts before UPS/FedEx roots out their thieving employees.

  3. A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Drakonblayde · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the beginning, networking was developed so that folks wouldn't have to shuttle data back and forth via locomotion.

    Now, we have so much data and fast bandwidth is so expensive, that transferring data to another site physically is actually a consideration.

    1. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Funny

      At the opposite end of the scale, I have been unable to persuade any of my pigeons to take off with an LTO tape attached to their legs.

      Has anyone else succeeded with this?

      Try disguising it as a coconut. Works better with swallows, however.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Drakonblayde · · Score: 3, Informative

    And yes, excerpted directly from the service web page found at https://aws.amazon.com/importe...

    'Once it arrives, attach the appliance to your local network, download and run the Snowball client to establish a connection, and then use the client to select the file directories that you want to transfer to the appliance. The client will then encrypt and transfer the files to the appliance at high speed.'

    So unless the client is absolute crap, it's a pretty good solution

  5. Re:Theft waiting to happen by CSMoran · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't understand [...]

    And that should be your cue not to post, and think for a moment. If you have sensitive data, you use encryption.

    --
    Every end has half a stick.
  6. And when you want to move your data out? by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do they load the box and send it back to you when you're moving to another service or returning to self-hosting?

    --
    If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
    1. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by Drakonblayde · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, it's 200 bucks + 3 cents a gig if you want them to ship the data to you, which isn't terribly unreasonable

  7. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Rainbow+Nerds · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are versions for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Amazon supports the Snowball Client for Ubuntu 12+ and RHEL 6+, but no doubt it can run on other systems. https://aws.amazon.com/importexport/tools/

    Also, as per this link, they're working on chain-of-custody tracking using GPS. Amazon has already considered the possibility of theft and it doesn't seem likely to be an issue.

    --
    M-I-Z
    kU still sucks!
  8. Not gonna happen by garryknight · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you have 50TB of data that you'd like to put on the S3 cloud, Amazon is releasing Snowball.

    I don't, therefore it isn't.

    --
    Garry Knight