Subj : AWS retires Snowmobile data in a lorry scheme
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Thu Apr 18 2024 14:45:05

AWS retires Snowmobile data in a lorry scheme

Date:
Thu, 18 Apr 2024 13:30:00 +0000

Description:
Amazon pulls its Snowmobile cloud migration truck off the road, citing 
inefficiencies compared with modern solutions.

FULL STORY
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) has stopped offering to transport data via an 
18-wheeler truck by retiring its Snowmobile service. 

Andy Jassy, now Amazon CEO, revealed Snowmobile at the companys 2016 
re:Invent conference, where the truck, which was driven on stage, served as a 
45-foot, 100-petabyte mobile shipping container designed to migrate large 
amounts of data from on-prem environments to the cloud. 

However, as of March 2024, AWS quietly removed Snowmobile from its website, 
which CNBC has now confirmed. AWS Snowmobile retired 

In recent years, significant digital landscape developments have changed the 
way many businesses compute, and the cloud has become more commonplace. An 
AWS spokesperson told CNBC that it had introduced more cost-effective options 
for moving data, which has effectively rendered the truck obsolete:



Since we introduced Snowmobile in 2016, weve released many other new services 
and features which have made migrating data to AWS even faster and easier for 
our customers. 

With Snowmobile, clients faced the costs and logistical challenges of power, 
cooling, networking, parking, and security. The power-hungry solution needed 
a 350kW current on top of the $0.005 per gigabyte per month (or $500,000 per 
month for 100 petabytes). 

At the time, the truck was a groundbreaking solution. Jassy revealed that the 
HDD-equipped Snowmobile could shift one exabyte, or 1 million terabytes, to 
the cloud in just six months using 10 of the trucks something that mightve 
taken 26 years with a 10Gbps connection. 

Multiple 40Gbps connections provided each Snowmobile with a data transfer 
capability of 1Tbps, meaning it would take around 10 days to fully load a 
truck with data. 

The spokesperson added (via CNBC ): We couldnt be more proud of the value 
that Snowmobile has brought to customers, and were pleased to see them 
choosing newer, more efficient technologies. 

As of now, the AWS Snow Family website refers customers to other solutions, 
like Snowcone and Snowball Edge. More from TechRadar Pro These are the best 
cloud hosting providers around today AWS just bought a nuclear-powered data 
center Store your data off-prem with the best cloud storage and best cloud 
backup tools



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/aws-retires-snowmobile-data-in-a-lorry-scheme


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