SNOWBALL LOADER – MIGRATING DATA TO THE CLOUD

Enterprises and Government Agencies face difficult choices in migrating large volumes of data to the Cloud. No matter what data migration method used – IT staff share a common refrain:

“Cloud migrations are too slow, too costly, too complex, require too much coveted bandwidth and need more specialized IT talent dedicated to the data migration project than anticipated.”

One alternative is to upload data from local storage to the Cloud with the AWS Snowball Edge — a portable storage device Amazon Web Services ships to most any location globally. Customers request AWS Snowball(s) be shipped to them in order avoid the problem of moving data through slow or congested network connections. While a Snowball can hold up to 80 Terabytes of data, two principal challenges remain when migrating data to the Cloud through this device:

  1. Overall complexity: requires specialized IT talent to dedicate the time required to prepare the environment, write the scripts, and verify the transfer takes place.
  2. Slowness to load: the time it takes to load one Snowball, let alone the difficulty and time required to load simultaneous Snowballs, dramatically exceeds what is typically budgeted for data migration projects – whether for hundreds of Terabytes or one or more Petabytes.

Listen to what AWS specialists as well as customers say about the challenges of using Snowball(s) to transfer large volumes of data to the Cloud and how Pixspan Data’s Snowball Loader software solves these problems by turning the AWS Snowball Edge into a practical, easy to use, fast pathway to the Cloud.

Ease of Use

“The first time you use Snowball, you need a PhD to get it running” – Executive, Amazon Web Services

“While we liked the portability of the Snowball for our remote video productions, we decided its complexity of operation made it impractical to deploy with our staff, contractors and worldwide partners. Then, we tried using AWS Snowball with Pixspan Data’s Snowball Loader software, PixMover™ What a difference — it took us less than one hour to install and begin loading data. PixMover™ has an easy to use drag and drop GUI which made Snowball a useful solution for us after all” – IT Director, Global Fitness Company

Most Snowball users come to Pixspan ready to give up on Snowball. Then they find out how much easier and faster the data transfer process is by including Pixspan’s software. PixMover™ software has a user-friendly, drag and drop GUI that eliminates the need for and complications associated with Command Line instructions and complicated scripts. It simplifies the job of loading a single Snowball and allows for easy simultaneous loads on multiple Snowballs, requiring no specialized training. Pixspan’s Snowball Loader software installs in about an hour and lets you immediately load from local storage to the AWS Snowball container(s).

Speed

“Most of our customers struggle to achieve transfer speeds of 100 MB/sec. to 200 MB/sec., but we tested Pixspan Data’s Snowball Loader software and saw it work at over 1,000 MB/sec.” – Manager, Amazon Web Services

“I have seen Snowball users take two weeks or more to optimize their transfer speeds. PixMover™ is optimized right out of the box.” – Manager, Amazon Web Services

“We were able to run a controlled test in our AWS office, and Pixspan’s Snowball Loader software was 2X to 3X faster than our AWS native tools.” These higher speeds cut one to three days off the time to load each Snowball Edge – Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services

PixMover™ intelligent software is the fastest way to transfer data to Snowball. It makes it easy to load one or multiple Snowballs, because it lets you manage jobs from a single management page, stage them in advance, and complete them faster.

PixMover™ is Available in Two Ways:

  • For migrations involving multiple Petabytes, consider the PixMover™ Snowball Loader bundle. It consists of as many servers preloaded with PixMover™ software as required, supporting multiple Snowballs at a time. This solution is offered on a cents per gigabyte basis. Contact us for a quote at [email protected]
  • PixMover™ is also available as a standalone software subscription that customers load on their own hardware, which not only helps with an initial data migration project, but continues supporting ongoing Cloud upload needs.
Read the Snowball use case comparing transfer time and cost to the Cloud

Whether you have hundreds of Terabytes or tens of Petabytes, PixMover™ is the easiest and fastest way to load a Snowball.