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).

Amazon Snowball Edge is no longer available to new customers. New customers should explore Amazon DataSync for online transfers, Amazon Data Transfer Terminal for secure physical transfers, or Amazon Partner solutions. For edge computing, explore Amazon Outposts.

Amazon Snowball Edge availability change

Amazon Snowball Edge is no longer available to new customers. New customers should explore DataSync for online transfers, Amazon Data Transfer Terminal for secure physical transfers, or Amazon Partner solutions. For edge computing, explore Amazon Outposts.

With this change, Amazon will no longer offer any Amazon Snow Family devices for new customers to order. This change will not impact customers currently using Amazon Snowball Edge to meet their edge compute and data migration needs. Amazon continues to invest in security and availability improvements for Amazon Snowball Edge devices. However, we recommend evaluating the alternatives below to better meet your needs.

Amazon Snowball Edge storage optimized alternatives

Amazon has provided details on your service transition options for both online and offline data transfer scenarios below. Amazon recommends that your migration goals, network bandwidth throughput and reliability, and size of data to be imported, should guide you on which service to use.

Online data transfers

Amazon DataSync is an online data movement service that simplifies and accelerates data migrations to Amazon and helps you move data quickly and securely between on-premises storage, edge locations, other cloud providers, and Amazon storage. DataSync can copy data to and from Network File System (NFS) shares, Server Message Block (SMB) shares, Hadoop Distributed File Systems (HDFS), self-managed object storage, and Amazon storage services. With DataSync, you pay only for your usage of the service. No software licenses, contracts, or maintenance fees are required. This provides a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to manually building, operating, and optimizing your own high-performance scripted transfers, as well as lower total cost than buying and running commercial transfer tools.

DataSync employs an transfer protocol designed by Amazon that's decooupled from the storage protocol to accelerate data movement. The protocol performs optimizations on how, when, and what data is sent over the network. Network optimizations performed by DataSync include incremental transfers, in-line compression, and sparse file detection, as well as in-line data validation and encryption. Connections between the local DataSync agent and the in-cloud service components are multi-threaded, maximizing performance over your Wide Area Network (WAN). A single DataSync task is capable fully utilizing 10 Gbps over a network link between your on-premises environment and Amazon.

The DataSync agent connects to your existing storage systems using the industry-standard NFS and SMB protocols, to your Hadoop cluster as an HDFS client, to your self-managed object storage using the Amazon S3 application programming interface (API). The agent transfers data rapidly and writes it into your designated Amazon S3 bucket, Amazon EFS file system, or Amazon FSx file system. File permissions and metadata are preserved when copying objects and or data between Amazon S3, Amazon EFS, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, FSx for Lustre, FSx for OpenZFS, or FSx for ONTAP.

Consider your available network bandwidth, its reliability, and your data size to determine if DataSync meets your migration goals. To estimate your data migration timelines, more details are available here. To overcome network bandwidth limitations, consider using DataSync with an Amazon Direct Connect hosted connection. You can procure this connection from an Amazon Direct Connect Delivery Partner for the duration of the data transfer project. More information is available here. Amazon Direct Connect can significantly improve the reliability and speed of large data migrations when used with DataSync.

For more details on transferring your data using DataSync, see the DataSync User Guide.

Offline data transfers

Amazon Data Transfer Terminals is a secure, physical location for you to bring your data storage devices for fast data transfer to the Amazon cloud. Simply schedule a reservation at your nearest Data Transfer Terminal from the Amazon console, arrive at the facility at your scheduled time, and upload your data to your Amazon cloud services with your own devices, in a private setting. Amazon Data Transfer Terminal is intended for those who create or collect large amounts of data on physical, portable storage devices and need to transfer that data into the Amazon cloud to enable cloud-based workloads. Amazon Data Transfer Terminal offers a high-speed solution for uploading large volumes of data to the Amazon cloud. With rapid upload speeds, you can transfer massive amounts of data in a fraction of the time compared to traditional methods. This accelerated data ingestion process significantly reduces upload times from hours or days to mere minutes, enabling faster time-to-market for your data-driven projects and applications.

Read the blog post for guidance for typical data transfer scenarios and outcomes from Amazon Data Transfer Terminal. For more details on getting started with Amazon Data Transfer Terminal, please read the User Guide.

Partner solutions for offline data transfers

Amazon Partners offer offline data transfer services through the Amazon Marketplace, such as Seagate and Tsecond. Learn more about these offline data transfer services by searching the Amazon Marketplace.

Amazon Snowball Edge Compute Optimized Alternatives

For customers using or considering Amazon Snowball Edge Compute Optimized for hybrid or edge computing workloads, consider Amazon Outposts as an alternative. Outposts is a family of fully managed solutions delivering Amazon infrastructure and services to virtually any on-premises or edge location for a truly consistent hybrid experience. Outposts solutions allow you to extend and run native Amazon services on premises, and is available in a variety of form factors, from 2U Outposts servers to 42U Outposts racks, and multiple rack deployments. With Amazon Outposts, you can run some Amazon services locally and connect to a broad range of services available in the local Amazon Web Services Region. Run applications and workloads on premises using familiar Amazon services, tools, and APIs. Outposts supports workloads and devices requiring low latency access to on-premises systems, local data processing, data residency, and application migration with local system interdependencies.

Both form factors are fully managed by Amazon and can operate without Amazon connectivity for up to 7 days in Denied, Disrupted, Intermittent, and Limited (DDIL) environments. For organizations with edge computing workloads, Outposts offers a cloud-native hybrid architecture, providing the full, native Amazon EC2 API experience that extends your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) into your on-premises environment. This enables operational consistency, allowing you to manage your cloud and on-premises workloads with the same tools, APIs, and familiar Amazon services. To learn more about Outposts, visit our technical documentation for Outposts servers, first-generation Outposts racks, and second-generation Outposts racks .