AWS scoops two Intel CPUs and 8TB of storage into new ‘Snowcone’ edge box
(2020/06/18)
- Reference: 1592461694
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/18/aws_snowcone/
- Source link:
AWS has added a new and very small member to its Snow family of temporarily-on-premises devices.
Snow devices are rented for a set number of days, because the expectation is they’ll be used to gather data or run some jobs somewhere you don’t always need an appliance. AWS offers a datacentre-on-a-truck Snowmobile for jobs like migrations and the 21.3kg Snowball to provide 50TB of storage in out-of-the-way places.
The new [1]Snowcone is a mere 2.1kg, and at 227 mm x 148.6 mm x 82.65 mm, about the size of a shoebox – for kids’ shoes.
Inside you’ll find a pair of Intel x86 CPU cores, 8 terabytes of storage, and 4GB of RAM. A pair of Ethernet ports figure out if they should move data at one or ten Gbps while 802.11ac and 802.11abgn mean gigabit WiFi is another I/O option. The device achieved the IP65 rating, so is dust-tight when its flaps are shut and can survive being hosed down, frozen, or used in very hot places.
AWS wouldn’t tell us which Intel CPUs power the device but the fact it is powered by USB-C – which can carry a maximum of 100 watts – suggests it is something that doesn’t need a lot of power. The cloud colossus has a fondness for Intel Xeons and something like the Xeon D-1602 which requires 27 watts could do the job. So could the 10th-gen Core i7-10875H, a laptop CPU that sports eight cores, reaches 5.1GHz but can be dialled down to 35 watts.
All three of the CPUs we’ve mentioned above include Intel’s VT-x virtualisation extensions, which will aid execution for the EC2 instances that can run inside a Snowcone, in the following three configurations:
snc1.micro (1 CPU and 1 GB RAM)
snc1.small (1 CPU and 2 GB RAM)
snc1.medium (2 CPU and 4 GB RAM)
The [2]device can also run the AWS Greengrass iOT service and sync to the AWS cloud.
The gizmo's light-ish weight means AWS has shown it off connected to a drone and siphoning data from it over a USB-C port dedicated to data ingress. For now you can only rent the device in the USA, where it costs $60 per hire and $6 a day. As is ever the case, AWS will propagate it to other regions over time. ®
Sponsored: [3]How to Thrive in the Digital Economy
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-aws-snowcone-small-lightweight-edge-storage-and-processing/
[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/snowball/latest/snowcone-guide/snowcone-spec-requirements.html
[3] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1956/-8461/how-to-thrive-in-the-digital-economy?td=wptl1956
Snow devices are rented for a set number of days, because the expectation is they’ll be used to gather data or run some jobs somewhere you don’t always need an appliance. AWS offers a datacentre-on-a-truck Snowmobile for jobs like migrations and the 21.3kg Snowball to provide 50TB of storage in out-of-the-way places.
The new [1]Snowcone is a mere 2.1kg, and at 227 mm x 148.6 mm x 82.65 mm, about the size of a shoebox – for kids’ shoes.
Inside you’ll find a pair of Intel x86 CPU cores, 8 terabytes of storage, and 4GB of RAM. A pair of Ethernet ports figure out if they should move data at one or ten Gbps while 802.11ac and 802.11abgn mean gigabit WiFi is another I/O option. The device achieved the IP65 rating, so is dust-tight when its flaps are shut and can survive being hosed down, frozen, or used in very hot places.
AWS wouldn’t tell us which Intel CPUs power the device but the fact it is powered by USB-C – which can carry a maximum of 100 watts – suggests it is something that doesn’t need a lot of power. The cloud colossus has a fondness for Intel Xeons and something like the Xeon D-1602 which requires 27 watts could do the job. So could the 10th-gen Core i7-10875H, a laptop CPU that sports eight cores, reaches 5.1GHz but can be dialled down to 35 watts.
All three of the CPUs we’ve mentioned above include Intel’s VT-x virtualisation extensions, which will aid execution for the EC2 instances that can run inside a Snowcone, in the following three configurations:
snc1.micro (1 CPU and 1 GB RAM)
snc1.small (1 CPU and 2 GB RAM)
snc1.medium (2 CPU and 4 GB RAM)
The [2]device can also run the AWS Greengrass iOT service and sync to the AWS cloud.
The gizmo's light-ish weight means AWS has shown it off connected to a drone and siphoning data from it over a USB-C port dedicated to data ingress. For now you can only rent the device in the USA, where it costs $60 per hire and $6 a day. As is ever the case, AWS will propagate it to other regions over time. ®
Sponsored: [3]How to Thrive in the Digital Economy
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/introducing-aws-snowcone-small-lightweight-edge-storage-and-processing/
[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/snowball/latest/snowcone-guide/snowcone-spec-requirements.html
[3] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1956/-8461/how-to-thrive-in-the-digital-economy?td=wptl1956
Re: So this means
JDX
Presumably a drone just appears in the forest and takes it back to base :)
From a certain well none Ex-Amazon Employee
richardcox13
[1]Time Bray about this L
I’ve held one of these in my hands. One use-case is a video shooter taking it out in hostile conditions. Dunno if it’ll be popular, but it’s a super-cool piece of gear.
So at least one part of this is for those cases where, some a time, there is no expectation on connectivity.
[1] https://twitter.com/timbray/status/1273505652707520514
So this means
. . that an 8TB disk still has more bandwidth than an average Internet connection.
I'm guessing that a 1GBps fiber line would work better, but that is far from being the general case in the USA, so fill up a snowcone and ship the box back so AWS can transfer it to your instance is what this is about.
Not a bad idea.