Filed under: Internet, Web services
Amazon adds physical data transfer option to AWS
I'm a big fan of Amazon Web Services (AWS). I use Amazon S3 to backup my websites every day and have used the CloudFront as an inexpensive CDN for image hosting. Lots of individuals and businesses also use S3 as a cloud-based backup too, using Jungle Disk, S3Fox, and other utilities to transfer files directly to S3.But what happens if you have A LOT of data to transfer. Like hundreds of gigabytes, or multiple terabytes? If you want to take advantage of the various AWS services -- say you want to backup all of your home movies for double-security/potential global access or your business has a few terrabytes of data it would like to incoporate with an EC2 application -- how long is it going to take to actually transfer that much data? It almost seems like it would be faster to just ship Amazon a hard drive and let them transfer everything. Which is exacty what Amazon is proposing you do with its new AWS Import/Export service.
The service, which is in limited beta (you can apply now) and currently only uploads to US-based S3 buckets for now, works like this:
- Fill out an electronic form detailing your S3 bucket info, AWS password and a shipping address
- Attach some signed digital files to your external device
- Mail your external hard drive, with all required power adaptors and connection cables to Amazon.
The price? $80 per device, plus $2.50 for each hour of transfer required. Right now, the service only supports sending data to Amazon, but in the future, Amazon will support sending external drives with large amounts of data back to customers, similar to what Backblaze offers its customers as a recovery solution.
Amazon has a great pricing calculator so you can work out how expensive a large transfer might be as compared to standard S3 upload bandwidth costs (which are not charged for AWS Import/Export transfers) and the detaild description section of the AWS Import/Export page lists the transfer time for uploading 1 TB of data at various connection rates.
If you have lots of data you would like to host on Amazon's secure cloud, AWS Import/Export might just be the right tool for the job!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tlove said 3:09PM on 5-21-2009
wow i was just looking at my options to do just that!
im new to s3 anyone have some favorite open source apps for working with s3?
whats the best way to mount a bucket as a local drive?
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Christina Warren said 4:45PM on 5-21-2009
What platform are you on? There are some OS-specific tools, but there's lots of opensource stuff too.
For general file management, I think the S3Fox extension for Firefox is fantastic (http://www.s3fox.net/), I also LOVE the JetS3t toolkit (http://jets3t.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html). I use S3Sync, which is Ruby-based, to back-up everything remotely from my webserver directly to S3.
As for mounting as a disk -- Jungle Disk does this, but the only issue is that other browsers might not be able to read the Jungle Disk system that sits on top of S3 (because there isn't a traditional folder structure in S3, every bucket is essentially a folder, but there is no hierarchical structure). S3Drive was a straight-S3 as disk mounting tool that I've used before, but the website is down. Maybe there are mirrors somewhere.
Hopefully that info can get you started! S3 is awesome :-)
PigSpigot said 4:17PM on 5-21-2009
I love the way Amazon has branched out to use its massive supercomputing and server capacity to make web development easier and more stable. Quick, giant data transfer = the next level of awesome.
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tlove said 4:59PM on 5-21-2009
Christina,
for my desktops im on windows and i was hopeing for just a S3Drive like solution so that i could use my existing synch/mirror software which is Beyond Compare. Ill go on a hunt for S3drive, i too had seen it had gone missing. Thanks
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I Know Da Guy Entertainment said 5:24PM on 5-21-2009
Great! Flying cars are just around the corner. myspace.com/iknowdaguy
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Tim said 10:52PM on 5-21-2009
Anyone else concerned about the potential for physical security risks with this kind of approach? What would it really take for someone to put something malicious on to one of these drives and see it take down AWS/S3. I haven't looked to see if they explain the entire process, but I sure hope that they are transferring to something that isn't connected directly to the AWS data centers first to make sure there isn't something malicious on the drives first.
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Alex said 4:52PM on 7-30-2009
I use S3fm, a free online Amazon S3 file manager. Nice, slick interface, I love its built-in media player and image slide show.
No installations required, it loads by your browser directly from Amazon S3, secure and convenient.
http://www.s3fm.com/
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