I. Snowball

  1. Physical data transport solution that helps moving TBs/PBs of data in/out of AWS.

  2. Alt to moving data over network and paying network fee.

  3. Secure, tamper-resistance, uses KMS 256-bit encryption.

  4. Tracking using SNS and text messages with e-ink shipping label.

  5. Pay per data transfer job.

  6. Used in large data cloud migrations, Datacenter decommission and disaster recovery.

  7. If it takes more than a week to transfer over network, consider using Snowball.

  8. Use Snowmobile while transferring more than 10PB

  9. Process

    1. Order a snowball from AWS
    2. Install snowball client on your servers
    3. Connect snowball to your server and move files using client
    4. Ship back the device using onboard e-ink shipping label
    5. Data will be loaded to S3 once snowball reaches AWS facility
    6. Snowball is then completely wiped
    7. Tracking of every step using SNS, text and console

  10. Snowball edge is a new service that brings compute power to snowball

  11. Snowball edge comes with 100TB with two options

    1. Storage optimized: 24 vCPU
    2. Compute optimized: 52 vCPU and optional GPU

  12. Glacier cannot import data directly from snowball, must be done through S3

II. Storage Gateway

  1. Bridges gap between on-premise data and cloud data in S3.

  2. Hybrid storage between on-prem and cloud.

  3. Exam tips

    1. On premise data to cloud → Storage Gateway
    2. File access/NFS → File Gateway
    3. Volume/Block Storage/iSCSI → Volume Gateway
    4. VTL tape solution/Backup with iSCSI → Tape Gateway

  4. Use cases: disaster recovery, backup & restore

    https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/4b1ebf36-c889-4d85-858e-cb2146e77ba5/1ab74251-2617-4970-b837-d7ef21c06174/Screen_Shot_2020-09-08_at_3.07.17_PM.png

  5. Three types

    1. File Gateway

      1. Configured S3 buckets are accessible via NFS and SMB protocols
      2. Supports S3 standard, S3 IA and One-zone IA
      3. Bucket access using IAM roles for each file gateway
      4. Most recently used data is cached in the file gateway
      5. Can be mounted on many servers
      6. Supports S3 object lock enabling WORM

      https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/4b1ebf36-c889-4d85-858e-cb2146e77ba5/84f3d166-8189-4476-9dff-717301212f70/Screen_Shot_2020-09-08_at_3.34.54_PM.png

    2. Volume Gateway

      1. Block storage using iSCSI protocol backed by S3
      2. Backed by EBS snapshots which can help restore on-premise volumes
      3. Supports up to 32 volumes
      4. Cached volumes: entire dataset on S3 but frequently accessed cached locally (1GB-32TB)
      5. Stored volumes: entire dataset is on-premise, scheduled backups to S3 (1GB-16TB)

      https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/4b1ebf36-c889-4d85-858e-cb2146e77ba5/00f8661b-b585-449f-b5eb-5d593ab11cde/Screen_Shot_2020-09-08_at_3.37.14_PM.png

    3. Tape Gateway

      1. Used for backing up physical tapes
      2. Virtual Tape Library (VTL) backed by S3 and Glacier
      3. Back up data using existing tape-based processes (and iSCSI interface)
      4. Works with leading backup vendors

    4. File Gateway — hardware appliance

      1. Using a file gateway means you need virtualization but now you can get a dedicated hardware for that as well.
      2. You can buy a Dell EMC rack from Amazon
      3. helpful for daily NFS backups