Amazon Import/Export Backup Upload Data Directly from Hard Drive to AWS
Uploading data from hard drive to any online backup service will take significant amount of time, to solve this problem Amazon has come up with solution called Import/Export Backup means Amazon S2 and S3 users can ship their hard drive to Amazon and Amazon will upload the data onto their servers. Uploading data to Amazon S3 servers is not a big issue if you have a high speed internet connection while some of these data sets would take weeks or months to upload. For example, it would take over 80 days to upload just 1TB of data over a T1 connection.
It is easy to initiate a data load. Here’s what you do:
- Load the data onto your compatible storage device.
- Create a manifest file per our specification. The file must include the name of the target S3 bucket, your AWS Access Key, and a return shipping address. You can also specify content types and S3 Access Control Lists in this file. You can also use the newest versions of third-party tools such as Bucket Explorer and S3 Fox to easily create manifest files from your S3 buckets.
- Email the manifest file to a designated address with the subject CREATE JOB.
- Await a return email with the subject RE: CREATE JOB.
- Extract the JOBID value from the email.
- Use the JOBID, manifest file, and your AWS Secret Access Key to generate and sign a signature file in the root directory of your storage device.
- Ship your storage device, along with all necessary power and data cables, to an address that we’ll provide to you. You can use one of the usual shipping company or a courier service.
- Await further status emails.
As soon as Amazon receive the hard drive it will start the data load process by the end if next working day, during the data load process Amazon also creating a log file ,this file will include the data and time of the load, and the S3 key, MD5 checksum, and size (in bytes) of each object. Amazon will reject unreadable files and those larger than 5GB and note them in the log. At the end of the process we’ll send the device back to you at our expense.
Pricing
As with all AWS services, you pay only for the resources that you use. Pricing includes fees for each storage device used and for the number of hours it takes to load your data (data-loading-hours). Estimate your AWS Import/Export charges using the AWS Import/Export Calculator.
Device Handling
- $80.00 per storage device handled.
Data Loading Time
- $2.49 per data-loading-hour. Partial data-loading-hours are billed as full hours.
Amazon S3 Charges
- Standard Amazon S3 Request and Storage pricing applies.
- Data transferred between AWS Import/Export and Amazon S3 is free of charge (i.e. $0.00 per GB).
