Troubleshooting AWS Snowball Edge

Keep the following general guidelines in mind when troubleshooting.

• Objects in Amazon S3 have a maximum file size of 5 TB.

• Objects transferred onto an AWS Snowball Edge device have a maximum key length of 933 bytes. Key names that include characters that take up more than 1 byte each still have a maximum key length of 933 bytes. When determining key length, you include the file or object name and also its path or prefixes. Thus, files with short file names within a heavily nested path can have keys longer than 933 bytes. The bucket name is not factored into the path when determining the key length. Some examples follow.

  Object name	Bucket name	Path plus bucket name	Key Length
  sunflower-1.jpg	pictures	sunflower-1.jpg	15 characters
  receipts.csv	MyTaxInfo	/Users/Eric/Documents/2016/January/	47 characters
  bhv.1	$7$zWwwXKQj$gLAOoZCj$r8p	/.VfV/FqGC3QN$7BXys3KHYePfuIOMNjY83dVx ugPYlxVg/evpcQEJLT/rSwZc$MlVVf/$hwefVISRqwepB$/BiiD/PPF$twRAjrD/fIMp/0NY	135 characters

• For security purposes, jobs using an AWS Snowball Edge device must be completed within 360 days of being prepared. If you need to keep one or more devices for longer than 360 days, see Updating the SSL certificate. Otherwise, after 360 days,the device becomes locked, can no longer be accessed, and must be returned. If the AWS Snowball Edge device becomes locked during an import job, we can still transfer the existing data on the device into Amazon S3.

• If you encounter unexpected errors using an AWS Snowball Edge device, we want to hear about it. Copy the relevant logs and include them along with a brief description of the issues that you encountered in a message to AWS Support. For more information about logs, see Commands for the Snowball Edge Client.

How to identify your device

Use the describe-device command to find the device type, then look up the returned value of DeviceType in the table below to determine the configuration.

  snowballEdge describe-device            
        

Example of describe-device output

  {
  "DeviceId" : "JID-206843500001-35-92-20-211-23-06-02-18-24",
  "UnlockStatus" : {
    "State" : "UNLOCKED"
  },
  "ActiveNetworkInterface" : {
    "IpAddress" : "127.0.0.1"
  },
  "PhysicalNetworkInterfaces" : [ {
    "PhysicalNetworkInterfaceId" : "s.ni-8d0ef958ec860ac7c",
    "PhysicalConnectorType" : "RJ45",
    "IpAddressAssignment" : "DHCP",
    "IpAddress" : "172.31.25.194",
    "Netmask" : "255.255.240.0",
    "DefaultGateway" : "172.31.16.1",
    "MacAddress" : "02:38:30:12:a3:7b"
  } ],
  "DeviceCapacities" : [ {
    "Name" : "HDD Storage",
    "Unit" : "Byte",
    "Total" : 39736350227824,
    "Available" : 985536581632
  }, {
    "Name" : "SSD Storage",
    "Unit" : "Byte",
    "Total" : 6979321856000,
    "Available" : 6979321856000
  }, {
    "Name" : "vCPU",
    "Unit" : "Number",
    "Total" : 52,
    "Available" : 52
  }, {
    "Name" : "Memory",
    "Unit" : "Byte",
    "Total" : 223338299392,
    "Available" : 223338299392
  }, {
    "Name" : "GPU",
    "Unit" : "Number",
    "Total" : 0,
    "Available" : 0
  } ],
  "DeviceType" : "EDGE_C"
}                
            

DeviceType and Snow Family device configurations
DeviceType value	Device configuration
EDGE	Snowball Edge storage-optimized (with EC2 compute functionality)
EDGE_C	Snowball Edge compute-optimized with AMD EPYC Gen1 and HDD
EDGE_CG	Snowball Edge compute-optimized with AMD EPYC Gen1, HDD, and GPU
EDGE_S	Snowball Edge storage-optimized
V3_5C	Snowball Edge compute-optimized with AMD EPYC Gen2 and NVME
V3_5S	Snowball Edge storage-optimized 210 TB

For more information about Snowball Edge device configurations, see AWS Snowball Edge device differences.

Troubleshooting boot‐up problems

The following information can help you troubleshoot certain issues you might have with booting‐up your Snow Family devices.

• Allow 10 minutes for a device to boot up. Avoid moving or using the device during this time.

• Ensure both ends of the cable supplying power are connected securely.

• Replace the cable supplying power with another cable that you know is good.

• Connect the cable supplying power to another source of power that you know is good.

Troubleshooting problems with the LCD display during boot-up

Sometimes, after powering on a Snowball Edge device, the LCD display may encounter a problem.

• The LCD screen is black and does not display an image after you connect the Snowball Edge device to power and press the power button above the LCD screen.

• The LCD screen does not advance past the Setting you your Snowball Edge, this may take a number of minutes. message and the network configuration screen does not appear.

  

Action to take when the LCD screen is black after pressing the power button

1. Ensure the Snowball Edge device is connected to a power source and the power source is providing power.

2. Leave the device connected to the power source for 1 to 2 hours. Ensure the doors on the front and back of the device are open.

3. Return to the device and the LCD screen will be ready to use.

Action to take when the Snowball Edge does not advance to the network configuration screen

1. Let the screen stay on the Setting you your Snowball Edge, this may take a number of minutes. message for 10 minutes.

2. On the screen, choose the Restart display button. The Shutting down… message will appear, then the Setting you your Snowball Edge, this may take a number of minutes. message will appear and the device will start normally.

   

If the LCD screen does not advance past the Setting you your Snowball Edge, this may take a number of minutes. message after using the Restart display button, use the following procedure.

Action to take

1. Above the LCD screen, press the power button to power off the device.

2. Disconnect all cables from the device.

3. Leave the device powered off and disconnected for 20 minutes.

4. Connect the power and network cables.

5. Above the LCD screen, press the power button to power on the device.

If the problem persists, contact AWS Support to return the device and receive a new Snowball Edge device.

Troubleshooting connection problems

The following information can help you troubleshoot certain issues that you might have with connecting to your Snowball Edge:

• Routers and switches that work at a rate of 100 megabytes per second don't work with a Snowball Edge. We recommend that you use a switch that works at a rate of 1 GB per second (or faster).

• If you experience odd connection errors with the device, power off the Snowball Edge, unplug all the cables, and leave it for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes have passed, restart the device, and try again.

• Ensure that no antivirus software or firewalls block the Snowball Edge device's network connection.

• Be aware that the file interface and Amazon S3 interface have different IP addresses.

For more advanced connection troubleshooting, you can take the following steps:

• If you can't communicate with the Snowball Edge, ping the IP address of the device. If the ping returns no connect, confirm the IP address for the device and confirm your local network configuration.

• If the IP address is correct and the lights on the back of the device are flashing, use telnet to test the device on ports 22, 9091, and 8080. Testing port 22 determines whether the Snowball Edge is working correctly. Testing port 9091 determines whether the AWS CLI can be used to send commands to the device. Testing port 8080 helps ensure that the device can write to the Amazon S3 buckets on it with S3 adapter only. If you can connect on port 22 but not on port 8080, first power off the Snowball Edge and then unplug all the cables. Leave the device for 10 minutes, and then reconnect it and start again.

Troubleshooting unlock-device command problems

If the unlock-device command returns connection refused, you may have mistyped the command syntax or the configuration of your computer or network may be preventing the command from reaching the Snow device. Take these actions to resolve the situation:

1. Ensure the command was entered correctly.

   1. Use the LCD screen on the device to verify the IP addressed used in the command is correct.

   2. Ensure that the path to the manifest file used in the command is correct, including the file name.

   3. Use the AWS Snow Family Management Console to verify the unlock code used in the command is correct.

2. Ensure the computer you are using is on the same network and subnet as the Snow device.

3. Ensure the computer you are using and the network are configured to allow access to the Snow device. Use the ping command for your operating system to determine if the computer can reach the Snow device over the network. Check the configurations of antivirus software, firewall configuration, virtual private network (VPN), or other configurations of your computer and network.

Troubleshooting manifest file problems

Each job has a specific manifest file associated with it. If you create multiple jobs, track which manifest is for which job.

If you lose a manifest file or if a manifest file is corrupted, you can download the manifest file for a specific job again. You do so using the console, AWS CLI, or one of the AWS APIs.

Troubleshooting credentials problems

Use the following topics to help you resolve credentials issues with the Snowball Edge.

Unable to locate AWS CLI credentials

If you're communicating with the AWS Snowball Edge device through the Amazon S3 interface using the AWS CLI, you might encounter an error message that says Unable to locate credentials. You can configure credentials by running "aws configure".

Action to take

Configure the AWS credentials that the AWS CLI uses to run commands for you. For more information, see Configuring the AWS CLI in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

Error message: Check Your Secret Access Key and Signing

When using the Amazon S3 interface to transfer data to a Snowball Edge, you might encounter the following error message.

An error occurred (SignatureDoesNotMatch) when calling the CreateMultipartUpload operation: The request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided. 
Check your AWS secret access key and signing method. For more details go to:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/RESTAuthentication.html#ConstructingTheAuthenticationHeader 

Action to take

Get your credentials from the Snowball Edge client. For more information, see Getting Credentials.

Troubleshooting NFS interface problems

The Snow Family device may indicate the status of the NFS interface is DEACTIVATED. This might occur if the Snow Family device was powered off without first stopping the NFS interface.

Action to take

To correct the problem, stop and restart the NFS service using the following steps.

1. Use the describe-service command to determine the status of the service:

   
   snowballEdge describe-service --service-id nfs
   

   The command returns the following.

   
   {
     "ServiceId" : "nfs",
     "Status" : {
     "State" : "DEACTIVATED"
     }
   }                    
                   

2. Use the stop-service command to stop the NFS service.

   
   snowballEdge stop-service --service-id nfs

3. Use the start-service command to start the NFS service. For more information, see Starting the NFS service on the Snow Family device.

   
   snowballEdge start-service  --virtual-network-interface-arns vni-arn --service-id nfs  --service-configuration  AllowedHosts=0.0.0.0/0
                   

4. Use the describe-service command to make sure the service is running.

   
   snowballEdge describe-service --service-id nfs

   If the value of the State name is ACTIVE, the NFS interface service is active.

   
   {
    "ServiceId" : "nfs",
    "Status" : {
    "State" : "ACTIVE"
    },
    "Endpoints" : [ {
    "Protocol" : "nfs",
    "Port" : 2049,
    "Host" : "192.0.2.0"
    } ],
    "ServiceConfiguration" : {
    "AllowedHosts" : [ "10.24.34.0/23", "198.51.100.0/24" ]
    }
   }
   

Troubleshooting data transfer problems

If you encounter performance issues while transferring data to or from a Snowball Edge, see Performance for recommendations and guidance on improving transfer performance. The following can help you troubleshoot issues that you might have with your data transfer to or from a Snowball Edge:

• You can't transfer data into the root directory of the Snowball Edge. If you have trouble transferring data into the device, make sure that you're transferring data into a subdirectory. The top-level subdirectories have the names of the Amazon S3 buckets that you included in the job. Put your data in those subdirectories.

• If you're using Linux and you can't upload files with UTF-8 characters to an AWS Snowball Edge device, it might be because your Linux server doesn't recognize UTF-8 character encoding. You can correct this issue by installing the locales package on your Linux server and configuring it to use one of the UTF-8 locales like en_US.UTF-8. You can configure the locales package by exporting the environment variable LC_ALL, for example: export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

• When you use the Amazon S3 interface with the AWS CLI, you can work with files or folders with spaces in their names, such as my photo.jpg or My Documents. However, make sure that you handle the spaces properly. For more information, see Specifying parameter values for the AWS CLI in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

Troubleshooting AWS CLI problems

Use the following topics to help you resolve problems when working with an AWS Snowball Edge device and the AWS CLI.

AWS CLI error message: "Profile Cannot Be Null"

When working with the AWS CLI, you might encounter an error message that says Profile cannot be null. You can encounter this error if the AWS CLI hasn't been installed or an AWS CLI profile hasn't been configured.

Action to take

Ensure that you have downloaded and configured the AWS CLI on your workstation. For more information, see Install the AWS CLI Using the Bundled Installer (Linux, macOS, or Unix) in the AWS Command Line Interface User Guide.

Null pointer error when transferring data with the AWS CLI

When using the AWS CLI to transfer data, you might encounter a null pointer error. This error can occur in the following conditions:

• If the specified file name is misspelled, for example flowwer.png or flower.npg instead of flower.png

• If the specified path is incorrect, for example C:\Doccuments\flower.png instead of C:\Documents\flower.png

• If the file is corrupted

Action to take

Confirm that your file name and path are correct, and try again. If you continue to experience this issue, confirm that the file has not been corrupted, abandon the transfer, or attempt repairs to the file.

Troubleshooting import job problems

Sometimes files fail to import into Amazon S3. If the following issue occurs, try the actions specified to resolve your issue. If a file fails import, you might need to try importing it again. Importing it again might require a new job for Snowball Edge.

Files failed import into Amazon S3 due to invalid characters in object names

This problem occurs if a file or folder name has characters that aren't supported by Amazon S3. Amazon S3 has rules about what characters can be in object names. For more information, see Creating object key names in Amazon S3 User Guide.

Action to take

If you encounter this issue, you see the list of files and folders that failed import in your job completion report.

In some cases, the list is prohibitively large, or the files in the list are too large to transfer over the internet. In these cases, you should create a new Snowball import job, change the file and folder names to comply with Amazon S3 rules, and transfer the files again.

If the files are small and there isn't a large number of them, you can copy them to Amazon S3 through the AWS CLI or the AWS Management Console. For more information, see How do I upload files and folders to an S3 bucket? in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.

Troubleshooting export job problems

Sometimes files fail to export into your workstation. If the following issue occurs, try the actions specified to resolve your issue. If a file fails export, you might need to try exporting it again. Exporting it again might require a new job for Snowball Edge.

Files failed export to a Microsoft Windows Server

A file can fail export to a Microsoft Windows Server if it or a related folder is named in a format not supported by Windows. For example, if your file or folder name has a colon (:) in it, the export fails because Windows doesn't allow that character in file or folder names.

Action to take

1. Make a list of the names that are causing the error. You can find the names of the files and folders that failed export in your logs. For more information, see AWS Snowball Edge Logs.

2. Change the names of the objects in Amazon S3 that are causing the issue to remove or replace the unsupported characters.

3. If the list of names is prohibitively large, or if the files in the list are too large to transfer over the internet, create a new export job specifically for those objects.

   If the files are small and there isn't a large number of them, copy the renamed objects from Amazon S3 through the AWS CLI or the AWS Management Console. For more information, see How do I download an object from an S3 bucket? in the Amazon Simple Storage Service User Guide.