Getting Started - Amazon Snowcone User Guide
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).

Getting Started

This section provides general instructions for creating and completing your first Amazon Snowcone job in the Amazon Snow Family Management Console. For an overview of the Amazon Snowcone device, see How Amazon Snowcone Works.

This getting started documentation assumes that you use the Amazon Snow Family Management Console to create your job, and you use the Snowball Edge client or the Amazon OpsHub for Snow Family application to unlock the Amazon Snowcone device. If you'd rather create your job programmatically with more options for the jobs you're creating, you can use the job management API. For more information, see Amazon Snowcone API Reference.

Before you can get started, you need to create an Amazon Web Services account and an administrator user in Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM). For more information, see Setting Up Amazon for Amazon Snowcone.

To get started with Amazon Snowcone, see Creating a job to order a Snow Family device.

Getting credentials to access a Snow Family device

Each job has a set of credentials that you must get from the Amazon Snow Family Management Console or the job management API to authenticate your access to the Snow Family device. These credentials are an encrypted manifest file and an associated unlock code. The manifest file contains important information about the job and permissions associated with it.

Note

You get your credentials after the device is in transit to you. You can see the status of your job in the Amazon Snow Family Management Console. For more information, see Understanding Amazon Snowcone Job Statuses.

To get your credentials using the console
  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the Amazon Snow Family Management Console.

  2. On the console, search the table for the specific job to download the job manifest for, and then choose that job.

  3. Expand that Job status pane, and choose View job details.

  4. In the details pane that appears, expand Credentials and then do the following:

    • Make a note of the unlock code (including the hyphens), because you need to provide all 29 characters to unlock the device.

    • In the dialog box, choose Download manifest, and follow the instructions to download the job manifest file to your computer. The name of your manifest file includes your Job ID.

    Note

    We recommend that you don't save a copy of the unlock code in the same location in the computer as the manifest for that job. For more information, see Best Practices for the Amazon Snowcone Device.

Now that you have your credentials, the next step is to download the Snowball Edge client, which is used to unlock the Amazon Snowball Edge device.

Next: Using the Amazon Snowball Edge Client