[gregdunn]

Disclaimer: I work at AWS, totally different team, and had never heard of this product until this announcement. This is 100% my personal opinion and I'm not operating in any official capacity.

>Personally, I'd probably just suffer through having to spend a week doing a slow internet upload/download rather than paying for Snowcone.

Well, I think there's two things here.

1) A lot of businesses probably won't be willing to spend a week with reduced internet capacity to upload stuff. Things we as single users might be okay with might not always translate to being a good fit for a business overall.

2) My reading is that some of the use cases for this are areas where you are likely to have limited or no internet connectivity.

From https://aws.amazon.com/snowcone/

>AWS Snowcone is built for edge computing and data storage outside of a data center. It is designed to meet stringent standards for ruggedization, including free-fall shock, operational vibration, and more. When sealed, the device is both dust-tight and water-resistant, protected from water jets on all sides. Snowcone has a wide operating temperature range from freezing to desert-like conditions, and withstands even harsher temperatures in storage.

and:

>AWS Snowcone deploys virtually anywhere you need it. It features 2 CPUs, 4 GB of memory, 8 TB of usable storage, Wi-Fi or wired access, and USB-C power using a cord or optional battery. You can put it in a messenger bag, run it in an autonomous vehicle or an airplane, or even attach it to a drone.

So, ruggedization and the ability to run this totally off battery points me towards thinking about use cases where there's not existing infrastructure to take advantage of. I guess this supported by the 'run it in an autonomous vehicle or airplane' bit I'm quoting as well.

[pgrote]

>1) A lot of businesses probably won't be willing to spend a week with reduced internet capacity to upload stuff. Things we as single users might be okay with might not always translate to being a good fit for a business overall.

Perfect for us. We used to ship small amount of data in the scheme of things on external drives to Amazon for long term storage in Glacier. Worked great. That program was dropped and replaced by Snowball.

We tried Snowball and never could get it to work properly in our location. Amazon support couldn't get it to work, either. It was really overblown for what we wanted to, anyway.

Sending over the wire isn't an option for us.

This is a better solution for us as long as the networking issues are resolved and the pricing works out.