Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Using NFS for Offline Data Transfer

Your Snow Family device contains a file interface that provides access to the internal device storage. To import your data offline to Amazon S3 with your Snow Family device, you connect the device to your on-premises network and then use Amazon OpsHub to unlock it. You can copy data from on-premises storage devices to the Snow Family device through the NFS file interface.

After you copy the data to the Snow Family device, the E Ink shipping label will be updated to ensure that the device is automatically sent to the correct Amazon facility. You can track the Snow Family device by using Amazon SNS generated text messages or emails, and the console. For information about Amazon OpsHub, see Using Amazon OpsHub for Snow Family to Manage Devices.

You can transfer up to 8 TB with a single Snowcone device and transfer larger datasets with multiple devices, either in parallel, or sequentially. For example, you can transfer 24 TB of data with three Snowcone devices. For larger data transfers jobs, you can use the Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device. You can transfer up to 80 TB with a single Snowball Edge Storage Optimized device and transfer larger datasets with multiple devices, either in parallel, or sequentially.

NFS configuration for Snow Family devices

NFS is ubiquitous (existing or being everywhere at the same time). Every laptop, workstation, and server has an IP connection and every modern operating system has a built-in NFS client. Object storage systems typically use the Amazon S3 API which is less ubiquitous than NFS, especially in the private data center. Amazon S3 does not support NFS. Hence before ordering the Snow Family device, you must decide to use either the Amazon S3 interface or NFS interface. If you choose the NFS interface, mount NFS bucket of the Snow Family device as a volume.

Prerequisite

Configure Snow Family devices

Confirm the NFS service is active

snowballEdge describe-service --service-id nfs --profile sbe1
{
  "ServiceId" : "nfs",
  "Status" : {
    "State" : "ACTIVE"
  }
}

If the value of the State name is Active, you can mount the Snow Family device NFS volume, otherwise you have to re-start the service or create virtual network interface.

Create a virtual network interface and start the NFS service

Check if virtual network interface exists

$ snowballEdge describe-virtual-network-interfaces --profile sbe1

Identify physical interface ID

$ snowballEdge describe-device --profile sbe1

Create virtual network interface and identify the virtual network interface (VNI) ARN

$snowballEdge create-virtual-network-interface \
     --physical-network-interface-id s.ni-abcd1234 \
     --ip-address-assignment STATIC \
     --static-ip-address-configuration IpAddress=192.168.0.10,Netmask=255.255.255.0
     --profile sbe1

Start the NFS service

$ snowballEdge start-service --virtual-network-interface-arns arn:aws:snowball-device:::interface/s.ni-8712e3a5cb180e65d --service-id nfs --service-configuration AllowedHosts=0.0.0.0/0 --profile sbe1

Check service status

$ snowballEdge describe-service --service-id nfs --profile sbe1

{
 "ServiceId" : "nfs",
 "Status" : {
 "State" : "ACTIVE"
 },
 "Endpoints" : [ {
 "Protocol" : "nfs",
 "Port" : 2049,
 "Host" : "192.168.0.10"
 } ],
 "ServiceConfiguration" : {
 "AllowedHosts" : [ "192.168.0.6/32", "11.160.2.156/32", "192.168.0.10/32" ]
 }
}

Mount the Snow Family device NFS volume

On the workstation, you can mount the Snow Family device volume which is the bucket name of NFS storage.

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/local
$ sudo mount -t nfs 192.168.0.10:/buckets/your-nfs-bucket-name /mnt/local

After mounting SBE volume, you can check the volume size with ‘df’ command.

$ df -h* */mnt/local
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
192.168.0.10          80TB  20G   79TB  1%  /mnt/local 

Troubleshooting NFS issues

The following are errors you might encounter when using NFS on Snow Family devices.

I Get a DEACTIVATED error message

You get this message if you turn off your Snow Family device without first stopping the NFS service. The next time you start NFS, it might fail with a DEACTIVATED error message.

For example: Starting the service on your Snowball Edge.

snowballEdge start-service --service-id nfs --virtual-network-interface-arns arn:aws:snowball-device:::interface/s.ni-84991da69040a7xxx

You can determine the status of the service by using the describe-service command.

snowballEdge describe-service --service-id nfs
{
  "ServiceId" : "nfs",
  "Status" : {
    "State" : "DEACTIVATED"
  }
}

How To Correct the Issue

To correct the problem, stop and restart the NFS service using the following steps.

Step 1: Use the describe-service command to determine the status of the service:

snowballEdge describe-service --service-id nfs
{
  "ServiceId" : "nfs",
  "Status" : {
    "State" : "DEACTIVATED"
  }
}

Step 2: Use the stop-service command to stop the NFS service:

snowballEdge stop-service --service-id nfs --profile 11

Step 3: Use the start-service command to start the NFS service normally:

snowballEdge start-service  --virtual-network-interface-arns arn:aws:snowball-device:::interface/s.ni-8712e3a5cb180e65d --service-id nfs  --service-configuration  AllowedHosts=0.0.0.0/0  --profile 11

Step 4: Use the describe-service command to make sure the service is ACTIVE:

snowballEdge describe-service --service-id nfs

{
 "ServiceId" : "nfs",
 "Status" : {
 "State" : "ACTIVE"
 },
 "Endpoints" : [ {
 "Protocol" : "nfs",
 "Port" : 2049,
 "Host" : "192.168.0.10"
 } ],
 "ServiceConfiguration" : {
 "AllowedHosts" : [ "192.168.0.6/32", "11.160.2.156/32", "192.168.0.10/32" ]
 }
}