Managing Your Devices - Amazon Snowball Edge Developer Guide
Rebooting your deviceShutting down your deviceEditing Your Device AliasManaging public key certificates using OpsHubGetting UpdatesManaging profiles
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Managing Your Devices

You use the Amazon OpsHub to manage your Snow Family devices. On the Device details page, you can perform the same tasks that you do using the Amazon CLI, including changing the alias of your device, rebooting the device, and checking for updates.

Rebooting your device

Follow these steps to use Amazon OpsHub to reboot your Snow device.

Important

We highly recommend that you suspend all activities on the device before you reboot the device. Rebooting a device stops running instances and interrupts any writing to Amazon S3 buckets on the device.

To reboot a device

  1. On the Amazon OpsHub dashboard, find your device under Devices. Then choose the device to open the device details page.

  2. Choose the Device Power menu, then choose Reboot. A dialog box appears.

    Device details page showing Device Power menu open with Reboot chosen.

  3. In the dialog box, choose Reboot. Your device starts to reboot.

    Reboot device window showing Reboot button at lower right.

    While the device shuts down, the LCD screen displays a message indicating the device is shutting down.

    Shutdown message on LCD screen.

Shutting down your device

Follow these steps to use Amazon OpsHub to shut down your Snow device.

Important

We highly recommend that you suspend all activities on the device before you shut down the device. Shutting down a device stops running instances and interrupts any writing to Amazon S3 buckets on the device.

To shut down a device

  1. On the Amazon OpsHub dashboard, find your device under Devices. Then choose the device to open the device details page.

  2. Choose the Device Power menu, then choose Shutdown. A dialog box appears.

    Device details page showing Device Power menu open with Shutdown chosen.

  3. In the dialog box, choose Shutdown. Your device starts to shut down.

    Shutdown device window showing Shutdown button at lower right.

    While the device shuts down, the LCD screen displays a message indicating the device is shutting down.

    Shutdown message on LCD screen.

Editing Your Device Alias

Use these steps to edit your device alias using Amazon OpsHub.

To edit your device's alias

  1. On the Amazon OpsHub dashboard, find your device under Devices. Choose the device to open the device details page.

  2. Choose the Edit device alias tab.

    Device details page showing Edit device alias tab at top right.

  3. For Device alias, enter a new name, and choose Save alias.

    Edit device alias window showing Save alias button at lower right.

Managing public key certificates using OpsHub

You can securely interact with Amazon services running on a Snowball Edge device or a cluster of Snowball Edge devices through the HTTPS protocol by providing a public key certificate. You can use the HTTPS protocol to interact with Amazon services such as IAM, Amazon EC2, S3 adapter, Amazon S3 compatible storage on Snow Family devices, Amazon EC2 Systems Manager, and Amazon STS on Snowball Edge devices. In the case of a cluster of devices, a single certificate is required and can be generated by any device in the cluster. Once a Snowball Edge device generates the certificate and you unlock the device, you can use Snowball Edge client commands to list, get, and delete the certificate.

A Snowball Edge device generates a certificate when the following events occur:

  • The Snowball Edge device or cluster is unlocked for the first time.

  • The Snowball Edge device or cluster is unlocked after deleting the certificate (using the delete-certificate command or Renew certificate in Amazon OpsHub).

  • The Snowball Edge device or cluster is rebooted and unlocked after the certificate expires.

Whenever a new certificate is generated, the old certificate is no longer valid. A certificate is valid for a period of one year from the day it was generated.

You can also use the Snowball Edge client to manage public key certificates. For more information, see Managing public key certificates.

Download the public key certificate using OpsHub

You can download the active public key certificate to your computer.

  1. On the Amazon OpsHub dashboard, find your device under Devices. Choose the device to open the device details page.

  2. In the device details page, choose the Manage certificate menu. From the menu, choose Download certificate.

  3. A window appears in which you can name the certificate file to download and choose the location on your computer where it will be downloaded. Choose Save.

Renewing the public key certificate using OpsHub

Before renewing the public key certificate, stop all data transfers to or from the Snow Family device and stop any EC2-compatible that are running. For more information, see Stopping an Amazon EC2-compatible instance in this guide.

  1. On the Amazon OpsHub dashboard, find your device under Devices. Choose the device to open the device details page.

  2. In the device details page, choose the Manage certificate menu. From the menu, choose Renew certificate.

  3. In the Renew certificate window, enter Renew in the field and choose Renew. The Snow Family device deletes the existing public key certificate and reboots the device or cluster.

    Renew certificate window with field at bottom of window and Renew button at bottom right.

Getting Updates for Your Device and the Amazon OpsHub Application

You can check for updates for your device and install them. You can also configure Amazon OpsHub to automatically update the application to the latest version.

Updating your device

Follow these steps to use Amazon OpsHub to update your Snow device.

To update your device

  1. On the Amazon OpsHub dashboard, find your device under Devices. Choose the device to open the device details page.

  2. Choose the Check for updates tab.

    The Check for updates page displays the current software version on your device and the latest software version, if there is one.

    Check for updates page

  3. If there is an update, choose Download update. Otherwise, choose Close.

Updating your Amazon OpsHub application

Amazon OpsHub automatically updates the application to the latest version. Follow these steps to verify that automatic update is enabled.

To verify that automatic updates are enabled for Amazon OpsHub

  1. On the Amazon OpsHub dashboard, choose Preferences.

  2. Open the Updates tab.

  3. Verify that Automatic updates enabled is selected. Automatic update is enabled by default.

    Updates tab showing automatic updates enabled

    If Automatic updates enabled is not selected, you will not get the latest version of the Amazon OpsHub application.

Managing profiles

You can create a profile for persistent storage of your credentials on your local file system. Using Amazon OpsHub, you have the option to create a new profile any time you unlock the device using the device IP address, unlock code, and manifest file.

You can also use the Snowball Edge Client to create a profile at any time. See Configuring a Profile for the Snowball Edge Client.

To edit or delete profiles, edit the profile file in a text editor.

Example snowball-edge.config file

This example shows a profile file containing three profiles—SnowDevice1profile, SnowDevice2profile, and SnowDevice3profile.


{"version":1,"profiles":
    {
    "SnowDevice1profile":
        {
            "name":"SnowDevice1profile",
            "jobId":"JID12345678-136f-45b4-b5c2-847db8adc749",
            "unlockCode":"db223-12345-dbe46-44557-c7cc2",
            "manifestPath":"C:\\Users\\Administrator\\.aws\\ops-hub\\manifest\\JID12345678-136f-45b4-b5c2-847db8adc749_manifest-1670622989203.bin",
            "defaultEndpoint":"https://10.16.0.1",
            "isCluster":false,
            "deviceIps":[]
        },
    },
    "SnowDevice2profile":
    {
        "name":"SnowDevice2profile",
        "jobId":"JID12345678-fdb2-436a-a4ff-7c510dec1bae",
        "unlockCode":"b893b-54321-0f65c-6c5e1-7f748",
        "manifestPath":"C:\\Users\\Administrator\\.aws\\ops-hub\\manifest\\JID12345678-fdb2-436a-a4ff-7c510dec1bae_manifest-1670623746908.bin",
        "defaultEndpoint":"https://10.16.0.2",
        "isCluster":false,
        "deviceIps":[]
    },
    "SnowDevice3profile":
    {
        "name":"SnowDevice3profile",
        "jobId":"JID12345678-c384-4a5e-becd-ab5f38888463",
        "unlockCode":"64c89-13524-4d054-13d93-c1b80",
        "manifestPath":"C:\\Users\\Administrator\\.aws\\ops-hub\\manifest\\JID12345678-c384-4a5e-becd-ab5f38888463_manifest-1670623999136.bin",
        "defaultEndpoint":"https://10.16.0.3",
        "isCluster":false,
        "deviceIps":[]
    }
}
To create a profile

  1. Unlock your device locally and sign in according to the instructions in Unlocking a device.

  2. Name the profile and choose Save profile name.

To edit a profile

  1. In a text editor, open snowball-edge.config from home directory\.aws\snowball\config.

  2. Edit the file as necessary. For example, to change the IP address of a device in the profile, change the defaultEndpoint entry.

  3. Save and close the file.

To delete a profile

  1. Using a text editor, open snowball-edge.config from home directory\.aws\snowball\config.

  2. Delete the line that contains the profile name, the curly brackets { }that follow the profile name, and the contents within the those brackets.

  3. Save and close the file.