Amazon offers users to transfer data to the clouds of suitcases

Today, Amazon showed a new way to deliver user data to its cloud service Amazon Web Services (AWS), bypassing the Internet. Since 2009, the largest retailer has been offering users with a low-speed internet connection a special AWS Import / Export service, within which they could send their data to the company, upload them to the cloud, from where they became available to the customer. Now Amazon offers for the same purpose a separate device with an E-Ink-screen, similar from the side to a massive suitcase called Snowball.

Snowball is a device with a weight of approximately 22 kg, protected from external influence, with built-in data carriers (it is not very clear what exactly) and with a network 10-gigabit card. It is understood that the AWS subscriber, through a special interface, must order the Import / Export service, after which they will send a Snowball by mail. When transporting the “suitcase”, nothing should happen to it, since it can withstand jolts or a fall with an acceleration of 6G, in addition, it is waterproof. Having received a Snowball, the customer connects it to his network as a regular network device and through a special application that supports 256-bit encryption, copies its data to it. Internal storage capacity is 50 terabytes. Having finished with this, the suitcase will have to be sent back to Amazon.

Snowball looks like this:

')
Ordering an Import / Export service using Snowball will cost the AWS subscriber $ 200. He will have 10 days to figure out how everything works, finish copying and send the “suitcase” back: every day beyond a ten-day period will cost you extra $ 15. The cost of copying data to the Amazon cloud itself will be $ 0.03 per gigabyte.

With a similar initiative, however, without such a unification, as in Amazon, this summer was made by Google. The Offline Media Import / Export service offers the user to send simply selected storage media, such as hard drives, flash cards or magnetic tapes, to specially selected providers.