
AWS Snowmobile – Massive Exabyte-Scale Data Transfer Service - beef3333
https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/
======
daveloyall
AWS should donate a few of these to the Internet Archive.

They just specifically asked for money to help establish a second copy in
Canada.[1]

It would be great publicity for AWS among a demographic not far from their
target... AND it would probably benefit AWS itself in some way eventually.

1: [https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-
archive...](https://blog.archive.org/2016/11/29/help-us-keep-the-archive-free-
accessible-and-private/)

EDIT: "a few"?? One trip?

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Malic
What IS it about AWS and the opaque naming of their services?! There is a
reason this exists: [https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain-
english](https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain-english)

~~~
jonknee
It's such a rarely needed service that I can't imagine naming it AWS Data
Center Mover would make any difference at all in terms of usage. The number of
customers who could make use of this thing is tiny, it doesn't matter what it
is called.

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Twirrim
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a FedEx truck filled with hard disks"

~~~
ghaff
That was an absolutely hilarious "demo." I know it was for real but it was
still the sort of thing that makes you just shake your head and laugh. I don't
want to be the one paying the S3 bill afterwards though :-)

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gregmac
So disappointed this is not called AWS Station Wagon.

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum)

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owlmonkey
If one of these jackknifes enroute is that called a 'snowcrash'?

~~~
randomdata
"Ended up in the rhubarb" or similar variation seems like the most appropriate
snowmobile slang.

~~~
dschep
Grandparent was probably referencing the Neal Stephenson novel[0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash)

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kyriakos
I started reading this thinking it was joke, I was very surprised when i
realised its a real service. amazing. What kind of applications use so much
data and are at the same time for them its cost effective to move them to the
cloud?

~~~
toomuchtodo
You're not paying listed rates if you're moving 100PB+ into S3 or Glacier.

~~~
binaryblitz
Well no, but I'm sure it's still pretty damn pricy.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Oh, no no, I agree with you. Just like Backblaze built their own solution
because all other cloud providers were stupid expensive in comparison.

But if you're a CTO or CIO who just wants to shovel the responsibility to
someone else, its a solid product at AWS. They're the new "No one got fired
for buying X".

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ruddct
Fun, old school massive data transfer as a service. For those of you too lazy
to do the math, filling up one of these trucks to capacity (100PB) would run
your 500,000 USD per month, ~17k per day (purely for transit).

Edit: I assume that you'd only get charged for the time your vehicle is in
transit, though the pricing info doesn't make that super clear. Also, as
pointed out, list rates may differ from bulk rates.

~~~
jonknee
Though I assume if you have >100PB to store you aren't paying list rates.

~~~
baq
and even if you are (call me, i've got a bridge to sell btw), you should be
able to afford it.

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antoineMoPa
This reminds me of rfc1149 - A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams
on Avian Carriers -
[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt)

~~~
Cyph0n
Not sure if the writer of that was serious...

~~~
bcbrown
Although it was implemented:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Real-
li...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Real-
life_implementation)

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dzdt
Will they let you snowmobile your data back out if you want to switch to
another cloud provider later? Or is it a one way street, and you pay thru the
nose if you want to load your exabytes back out?

~~~
mcpherrinm
The FAQ implies it is for ingest only, and you need to use snowballs if you
want to get data out.

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zeristor
As he says in the talk this truck is for 100 Pb, you'd need 10 of them for the
aforementioned Exabyte (Eb); which I imagine would nicely equate to a train.

If this data is valuable though wouldn't it need to be securely transported;
Mad Max: Fury Road springs to mind...

Increasingly the film Johnny Mnemonic is becoming more and more preposterous;
it was 320 Gb in the film. I think the book was 320Mb.

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RangerScience
Who even has that much data, outside of Google and Facebook?

I mean - I totally believe there are people that do have that much, I just
don't know who they are.

Fake Edit: Film?

~~~
halleym
Banks?

~~~
anotheryou
That's just numbers and a bit of text, no?

I guess anything media related is way bigger. I thought of media archives of
TV stations, but those are (if digital already) cold storage with only a low-
res preview live.

~~~
halleym
Check images, receipts, transactions, statements (particularly PDF), deposit
slips, mortgage documents... all kept for 7-20+ years.

~~~
RangerScience
Oooh. Very good point.

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secabeen
" Each Snowmobile consumes about 350 KW of AC power"

Wow.

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burger_moon
Maybe Fast and the Furious eleventeen be them hijacking some banks data from
AWS snowmobile rigs in transit.

