AWS Snowmobile Will Move Your Data to the Cloud in a Huge Truck

Enterprise services and technologies often fail to excite those of us who aren't a part of the field. Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the largest and most profitable divisions of e-commerce giant Amazon, has unveiled a new service that's an exception to the norm. That service is called AWS Snowmobile.

To emphasise how unusual this is, Amazon drove in a 15-metre long truck to the stage while unveiling AWS Snowmobile during its re:Invent 2016 conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Is Amazon getting into the trucking business? Well, sort of.

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AWS Snowmobile is the company's solution for enterprises that need to move massive amounts of data to the cloud. Each Snowmobile can move up to 100 petabytes (100,000 terabytes) of data to the cloud in one trip. This means that if your company has exabytes (1000 petabytes is 1 exabyte) of data to move to the cloud, AWS Snowmobile could do it in a matter of weeks.

Amazon says this is the fastest method available for data migration as of now. The good news is that AWS Snowmobile is available in all AWS regions including India. Yes, Amazon will send a truck your way to help you migrate data to the cloud.

AWS CEO Andy Jassy, at a press briefing session at the sidelines of the event, said this could cost companies something like 5 cents per gigabyte per month. The price will vary per company and its requirements, and the company's blog post doesn't mention any pricing information.

For those who don't need to move that much data to the cloud, Amazon unveiled the Snowball Edge - a 100TB hard drive stack with a rugged enclosure. It can also be used by those who need to carry their data to remote or offline locations. Snowball Edge pricing is listed online.

Disclosure: Amazon sponsored the correspondent's flights and stay for re:Invent 2016​