AWS Certified Data Engineer – AssociateData Ingestion and TransformationMedium
A media company has petabytes of historical video content stored in on-premises tape archives. They want to migrate this data to Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive for cost-effective long-term storage. Due to the massive volume and the offline nature of the tape archives, a network-based transfer is not feasible. Which AWS service should they use for this one-time, large-scale data ingestion?
- AAWS DataSync
- BAWS Snowball Edge
- CAWS Storage Gateway (Tape Gateway)
- DAWS Transfer Family
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. AWS Snowball Edge
AWS Snowball Edge is a physical device that allows transferring petabytes of data into and out of AWS. For massive, offline data migrations where network transfer is impractical, Snowball Edge is the most appropriate service, enabling data to be shipped directly to AWS data centers for ingestion into S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. AWS DataSync is for online network-based transfers, which is explicitly stated as not feasible for this scenario.
- C. AWS Storage Gateway (Tape Gateway) allows on-premises applications to use S3 as a virtual tape library, but it's for ongoing backup/archive, not a one-time physical migration of existing tape archives.
- D. AWS Transfer Family is for transferring files over network protocols (SFTP, FTPS, FTP), which is not suitable for offline tape archives.
AWS Snowball Edge
A data migration and edge computing device that securely transfers large amounts of data to and from AWS.
- Available in various capacities (e.g., Storage Optimized, Compute Optimized).
- Used for offline data transfer when network transfer is impractical.
- Provides tamper-resistant enclosures and end-to-end encryption.
Memory trick: Snowball Edge: Your physical truck for massive data moves.