AWS snowball for big corporations

Oken

http://www.businessinsider.com.a ... ata-centers-2015-10

Amazon has made it fast, easy, and cheap for big companies to move all of
their data into Amazon's cloud so they can close down their in-house data
centers.
Amazon is doing this with a creative new piece of hardware — a "box," if
you will — called Snowball.

Companies rent the Snowball box from Amazon for as little as $200.

After the box is plugged in and the security is configured, it can vacuum
ungodly amounts of data from a customer's data center into Amazon's cloud in
a matter of hours or days instead of months or longer.


Amazon believes the turbo-charged pathway to its cloud will be a game
changer. For instance, one company once came to Amazon wanting to move a
bunch of apps and data into Amazon's Amazon Web Services cloud, but it
couldn't.

It told the AWS team that "If we fully saturate our network, it would take
us 8.5 years and want to shut our data center down faster than that," Amazon
's cloud chief, Andy Jassy, told the crowd.

Big corporations are increasingly looking to cloud services as alternatives
to maintaining expensive in-house data centers.

Capital One is in the process of closing down five of its eight data centers
because it's moving its apps and tech into AWS, Capital One Chief
Information Officer Rob Alexander told attendees. General Electric intends
to move over 60% of the global workload into AWS, closing 30 of its 34 data
centers.

And some companies, like Yamaha America are going all in with Amazon,
closing all of their data centers altogether, saving $500,000 a year in the
process.

This should worry the big IT vendors that sell severs, networking, storage,
and other hardware, like Cisco, HP, and IBM. Like all big cloud companies,
Amazon builds much of its own data-center hardware. Meanwhile, enterprises
are saving money by not buying and maintaining all that gear themselves.

alexchan_au

大企业放心放到云上吗？

YugaYuga

Data Centre migration 很少会象文中所描绘的这么简单。文中的Snowball更适合的应用可能是Data Warehouse， BigData类有海量数据的系统。

报道中提到的snowball应该是这个： https://aws.amazon.com/importexport/

AWS Import/Export

AWS Import/Export Snowball is a petabyte-scale data transport solution that uses secure appliances to transfer large amounts of data into and out of AWS. Using Snowball addresses common challenges with large-scale data transfers including high network costs, long transfer times, and security concerns. Transferring data with Snowball is simple, fast, secure, and can be as little as one-fifth the cost of high-speed Internet.

With Snowball, you don’t need to write any code or purchase any hardware to transfer your data. Simply create a job in the AWS Management Console and a Snowball appliance will be automatically shipped to you*. Once it arrives, attach the appliance to your local network, download and run the Snowball client to establish a connection, and then use the client to select the file directories that you want to transfer to the appliance. The client will then encrypt and transfer the files to the appliance at high speed. Once the transfer is complete and the appliance is ready to be returned, the E Ink shipping label will automatically update and you can track the job status via Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), text messages, or directly in the Console.

YugaYuga

Thanks for sharing.

To lots of in-house IT, Cloud Computing, AWS included is (or is going to be) not only a game changer; it's a terminator.

YugaYuga

alexchan_au 发表于 2015-10-9 09:26
大企业放心放到云上吗？

云是否安全是用户关心的首要问题。全面回答这个问题够写一本书了。 简单提几个方面，希望有人参与讨论：

1. 云计算的安全是服务方和用户方共有的责任, 所以"云是否安全"没有一个简单的Yes / No的答案。比如AWS主要提供Infrastructure as a Service,  他们能确保的只能是physical facilities的安全；至于网络和OS之上的都与他们无关。可以肯定的是，大型云服务提供商对安全问题是不会掉以轻心的。

2. 大企业有很多IT 系统，那些对数据安全没有太高要求的是放到云里首选。比如公司对外的公共网站就是一个例子。Email系统本来就走Internet，Inhouse维护的成本相对很高，也是可以放到云里的首选之一。

3. 云有多种，不是简单等同于“外包”。大企业如果有很大规模的IT，采取自建private cloud + public cloud 往往是更cost effective的选择。事实上，hybrid cloud 就是目前最常规的做法。

alexchan_au

YugaYuga 发表于 2015-10-9 10:36
Thanks for sharing.

To lots of in-house IT, Cloud Computing, AWS included is (or is going to b ...

公司使用了office 365, Azure, AWS之类，是否就不需要System/Network Admin了  

YugaYuga

alexchan_au 发表于 2015-10-9 11:07
公司使用了office 365, Azure, AWS之类，是否就不需要System/Network Admin了

IT行业对各类“传统” Admin的需求的减少应该说从10年前（virtualisation开始普及的时候）就开始了, 但到完全不需要恐怕还有很长很长的路要走。具体到个人，你公司IT系统的维护管理是不是非要内部IT来做是个更切身的问题。

Cloud Computing还在快速进化中，目前来看和传统IT相比似乎Everything is different, yet Everything is the same.  但终极目标是IT成为象水电这样的Commodity Service.  今天大多数有点规模的非IT公司都或大或小有个IT部门的现象总有一天会成为历史。

alexchan_au

YugaYuga 发表于 2015-10-9 12:36
IT行业对各类“传统” Admin的需求的减少应该说从10年前（virtualisation开始普及的时候）就开始了, 但到 ...

问题是外包给MSP做的话，响应速度太慢了，特别是澳洲

YugaYuga

alexchan_au 发表于 2015-10-9 12:44
问题是外包给MSP做的话，响应速度太慢了，特别是澳洲

不否认这种现象的存在，但这二者之间并没有必然联系。

相反很多时候正是由于传统内部IT不能（及时）满足用户需求，用户才不得不转向云服务的。

xxmplus

alexchan_au 发表于 2015-10-9 10:26
大企业放心放到云上吗？

这个算伪命题，大数据时代下，做安全，你未必做得过aws啊，至少非IT业的大公司不会养那么多安全专家

浮云马

alexchan_au 发表于 2015-10-9 12:07
公司使用了office 365, Azure, AWS之类，是否就不需要System/Network Admin了

可能没必要专门设个职位做system admin了，因为系统配置，网络配置变简单了，但是相应的技能要求更高了

换句话说，以前可能需要专人做sys admin, 现在需要sys architect了