#106: AWS Snow Family Deep Dive

Brian calls on Wayne Duso, Vice President, AWS Storage, Edge, and Data Governance, to join him in this podcast and talk about data transfer and the power of the AWS “Snow” offerings. You might be amazed at the computational power, not just data transfer capabilities, that’s available within the Snow family.

Wayne describes himself as

As a long-time Amazon employee (he’s been there almost ten years) and AWS contributor, Wayne has a deep understanding of AWS products, especially where it concerns data movement and storage.

Snowcone on the ISS

AWS and Axiom Space are collaborating on developing a more efficient way to analyze data from Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) via AWS Snowcone SSD. AWS Snowcone is a small, rugged, and secure device offering edge computing, data storage, and data transfer on the go in an austere environment with little or no connectivity. Ax-1 is the first of several private space missions to ISS planned by Axiom Space, with the ultimate goal of building the first commercial space station.

We ran an article in June that described the collaboration between Amazon and Axiom Space Remotely Operate AWS Snowcone on the International Space Station (ISS). We also have a video of the Snowcone setup on our Instagram page.

More information on AWS Snow products can be found on AWS Snow Family.

This is a very informative discussion with plenty of detail about AWS’s Snow products, Edge Data, and Data Transfer options. If you want to skip around, the timestamps are listed below.

Timestamp

00:00 Introduction

Discussion around Snow product
Edge computing
What problem was being addressed
The journey to move massive amounts of data
Created Snowball

05:00 How it works

Customers wanted to process the data before transfer
Service evolved to collect and process data
Creation of Edge device
Data migration expectations

10:00 Outposts and Snow

Outpost systems are intended to extend an AWS region
Snow is further out on the edge but connected to the Internet
Snow devices at top-secret sites
How that works with AWS and ingesting data
Economics

15:00 Transforming business to Edge Compute

Payment structure
Supply and demand
All about logistics
Inventory management

20:00 Filtering services

What is the process
Use signals from customers to aid in planning
Planning is done every year, and it changes every year
What applications are being built
How those applications are built
And use cases
Adding IoT and RDS to devices
Flexibility in design

25:00 Hardware design principles

Hardware shared between service groups
Limit the number of part numbers
AWS is a holistic environment
Applications can be tested on a virtual machine
Can be run in-region

30:00 Management

Monitoring
Reporting
Edge Console
Accessible via API
Snowmobile – aptly named?
Logistics for Snowmobile, Snowball, Snowcone

35:00 How to connect Snowmobile to the datacenter

Simple explanation
Make it simple so there is no need for professional services
Lots of planning put in place
Axiom application in ISS
Moving photographs

40:00 Running Snowcone on ISS

What did the ISS get
Nothing special
Same Snowcone as displayed on AWS with special tape wrapping
How the data is protected

45:00 Security

RAID protection
AWS Datacenter
ISS Snowcone is still in space

46:00 Wrap up

Video pod on YouTube

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2 years ago

Harold Fritts

I have been in the tech industry since IBM created Selectric. My background, though, is writing. So I decided to get out of the pre-sales biz and return to my roots, doing a bit of writing but still being involved in technology.