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Snowball's chance of escaping cloud data migration hell

El Reg hefts Amazon's 50TB cloud data mule

FIRST LOOK VIDEO Moving data into and out of clouds is expensive and slow. Which is why Amazon Web Services (AWS) started rolling a Snowball, a box packing up to 50 terabytes of data.

Snowball works in two ways:

  • You fill it with data and ship it to AWS, which then uses its Ethernet ports to shove it directly in cloud storage;
  • You ask AWS to download data onto a Snowball and send it to you, so you can upload it into your own bit barns.

Snowballs are slowly rolling out around the world: they rolled into Australia the other day, just in time for Vulture South to grab the quick look below.

If you fancy a Snowball, remember that AWS charges US$200 fee for each Snowball job, plus $0.03 per GB to transfer data out of AWS. That's on top of charges to extract data from Glacier.

AWS' fee allows you to hang on to a Snowball for ten days. Pony up US$15 for each additional day. You also wear shipping costs.

As the video above confesses, we've not been able to use Snowball in anger. If you have, let us know in the comments or mail me! ®

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