Getting Started

With an AWS Snowball Edge device, you can access the storage and compute power of the AWS Cloud locally and cost effectively in places where connecting to the internet might not be an option. You can also transfer hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of data between your on-premises data centers and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Following, you can find general instructions for creating and completing your first AWS Snowball Edge device job in the AWS Snow Family Management Console. The console presents the most common workflows, separated into job types. You can find more information about specific components of the AWS Snowball Edge device in this documentation. For an overview of the service as a whole, see How AWS Snowball Edge works.

The getting started exercises assume that you use the AWS Snow Family Management Console to create your job, the AWS OpsHub for Snow Family to unlock and manage the AWS Snowball Edge device, and the Amazon S3 interface to read and write data. If you'd rather create your job programmatically with more options for the jobs you're creating, you can use the job management API. For more information, see AWS Snowball API Reference.

Before you can get started, you must create an AWS account and an administrator user in AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). For information, see Setting up your AWS access for AWS Snowball Edge.

Topics

• Creating a job to order a Snow Family device
• Cancelling a job through the AWS Snow Family Management Console
• Receiving the Snowball Edge
• Connecting to Your Local Network
• Getting credentials to access a Snow Family device
• Downloading and Installing the Snowball Edge client
• Unlocking the Snow Family device
• Setting Up Local Users
• Rebooting the Snow Family device
• Powering off the Snowball Edge
• Returning the Snowball Edge Device
• Return shipping for Snow Family devices
• Monitoring the Import Status
• Getting your job completion report and logs on the console

Getting credentials to access a Snow Family device

Each job has a set of credentials that you must get from the AWS Snow Family Management Console or the job management API to authenticate your access to the Snow Family device. These credentials are an encrypted manifest file and an associated unlock code. The manifest file contains important information about the job and permissions associated with it.

Note

You get your credentials after the device is in transit to you. You can see the status of your job in the AWS Snow Family Management Console. For more information, see Job Statuses.

To get your credentials using the console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Snow Family Management Console.

2. On the console, search the table for the specific job to download the job manifest for, and then choose that job.

3. Expand that Job status pane, and choose View job details.

4. In the details pane that appears, expand Credentials and then do the following:

   • Make a note of the unlock code (including the hyphens), because you need to provide all 29 characters to unlock the device.

   • In the dialog box, choose Download manifest, and follow the instructions to download the job manifest file to your computer. The name of your manifest file includes your Job ID.

   Note

   We recommend that you don't save a copy of the unlock code in the same location in the computer as the manifest for that job. For more information, see Best practices for using the Snowball Edge device.

Now that you have your credentials, the next step is to download the Snowball Edge client, which is used to unlock the AWS Snowball Edge device.

Next: Downloading and Installing the Snowball Edge client