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This introduction provides a high-level overview of AWS Import/Export. After reading this section, you should have a good idea what AWS Import/Export offers and how it can fit in with your business.
AWS Import/Export accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS using your portable storage devices for transport. AWS transfers your data directly onto and off of your storage devices using Amazon’s high-speed internal network thus bypassing the Internet. For large data sets, AWS Import/Export is often faster than Internet transfer and more cost effective than upgrading your connectivity.
![[Note]](images/note.png) | Note |
|---|---|
The beta version of AWS Import/Export only supports importing data into Amazon S3. |
Using AWS Import/Export provides the following major advantages:
AWS Import/Export works in conjunction with Amazon S3, as shown in the following figure and as described in the following table.
AWS Import/Export Process
 | You e-mail AWS a CREATE JOB request and
attach a job manifest to it. |
 | AWS Import/Export copies the manifest from your e-mail and
stores it. The CREATE JOB request and manifest
files are honored for up to 30 days from receipt. After that time,
we will refuse to accept delivery of your storage device. |
 | AWS Import/Export returns an e-mail confirming the job creation and gives you the job ID. |
 | You put a SIGNATURE file on the root directory of your storage
device. The file references the manifest file that you attached to
the CREATE JOB request e-mail, and you ship
your storage device to Amazon so that it reaches Amazon within 30
days of the CREATE JOB request. |
 | Amazon receives your device, authenticates it against the manifest received by e-mail, and loads your data to Amazon S3. |
 | We return your storage device. |
This section describes key concepts and terminology you need to understand to use AWS Import/Export effectively. They are presented in the order you will most like encounter them.
Objects are the fundamental entities stored in Amazon S3. Objects consist of data and metadata. Amazon S3 ignores the data portion of the object. The metadata is a set of name-value pairs that describe the object. These include some default metadata, such as the date last modified and standard HTTP metadata, such as Content-Type. You can also specify custom metadata when you store an object. The maximum size of an object is five gigabytes, but you can store an unlimited number of objects in an Amazon S3 bucket.
A bucket is a container for objects stored in Amazon S3. Every object on Amazon S3
resides in a bucket. For example, if you store an object named photos/puppy.jpg in the johnsmith bucket, then the object is
addressable using the URL http://johnsmith.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/puppy.jpg.
Buckets serve several purposes: they organize the Amazon S3 namespace at the highest level, they identify the AWS account responsible for storage and data transfer charges, they play a role in access control, and they serve as the unit of aggregation for usage reporting.
For more information, see the Amazon Simple Storage Service Developer Guide.
An AWS Import/Export job consists of the following:
Manifest file—Contains instructions for how to process and load your data
This file enables you to specify options, such as Amazon S3 bucket and
key prefix. You attach this file to a CREATE JOB e-mail
that you send to AWS Import/Export. For more information, see Manifest File.
SIGNATURE file—Identifies your storage device
When creating a new AWS Import/Export job, you copy the SIGNATURE file
to the root directory of your storage device and then ship it to AWS. You
generate the signature using your Secret Access Key as a key to sign an
encrypted hash constructed from your manifest file and the job ID. The
SIGNATURE file links your storage device to the CREATE
JOB request you submitted. For more information, see SIGNATURE File.
Job ID—A five digit alphanumeric string generated by AWS Import/Export that uniquely identifies your job
AWS Import/Export returns this ID to you in an e-mail after a
CREATE JOB request succeeds.
Storage device—Any physical medium, such as a hard drive, that stores your data
Each AWS Import/Export job has a status and each job corresponds to exactly one storage device.
Each AWS Import/Export job is valid for 30 days. If we do not receive your
storage device within 30 days of receiving the CREATE JOB
e-mail, the job expires and we will not accept delivery of your package. We only
process jobs that arrive before the job expiration date.
The manifest file is a YAML-formatted file that specifies how we should process the data on your storage device. (For more information about YAML, go to http://yaml.org.)
The information in the manifest includes the address to return your storage device
to, your AWS Access Key ID, the bucket you want your data loaded to, and the version
of the manifest file you're writing. You attach a manifest file to a CREATE JOB e-mail. For more information, see Creating a Manifest File.
The SIGNATURE file uniquely identifies the AWS Import/Export
job and authenticates your request. The file contains:
Method used to encrypt the signature value
Job ID listed in the corresponding manifest file
Signature value
The following is the contents of a SIGNATURE file.
version:1.0 signingMethod:HmacSHA1 jobId:112233 signature:fzfS9XZ/2XKg6yjMOXRWZcX3t/8=
The signature value in the file is an HMAC-SHA-1 encryption of the job ID and the
bytes in the manifest file. Any alteration of the manifest file while it travels
over the Internet will produce a different signature value from the one you created
with the original manifest file. You include the SIGNATURE file on the root
directory of your storage device so that we can compare the signature value you
computed with one we generate from the manifest file you e-mailed us. If the
signature value we generate does not match the one in the SIGNATURE file on your
storage device, we assume the manifest file was tampered with and we will not
process your job. For this reason, if you change the manifest in any way between the
time you send the CREATE JOB e-mail and the time you generate
the signature value and copy it to the root directory of your storage device, you
must send a CANCEL JOB e-mail for the original job (or just let
it expire in 30 days) and send us a new CREATE JOB request that
includes a new manifest file. For more information, see SIGNATURE File.
The import/export facility is the location at Amazon where we process your AWS Import/Export jobs. The import/export facility has import stations that provide a high speed, low latency connection to Amazon data services.
The following address is where you ship your storage device and packing slip.
AWS Import/Export JOBID ____________ 2646 Rainier Ave South Suite 1060 Seattle, WA 98144
AWS Import/Export charges a device handling fee and a fee per hour for loading data. You can look at the pricing on the AWS Import/Export detail page. For more information, go to AWS Import Export Detail Page. You can also approximate your costs using the AWS Import/Export calculator. For more information, go to the AWS Import/Export Calculator.
Once we load your data into AWS you can use it with all AWS services. The following services are the ones you might use most frequently:
Amazon ElasticCompute Cloud—This web service provides virtual compute resources in the cloud.
For more information, go to Amazon ElasticCompute Cloud.
Amazon Elastic MapReduce—This web service enables businesses, researchers, data analysts, and developers to easily and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data.
It utilizes a hosted Hadoop framework running on the web-scale infrastructure of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). For more information, go to Amazon Elastic MapReduce.
Amazon Simple Storage Service—This web service provides data storage across the Internet.
Amazon S3 is tightly integrated with all AWS services. Typically, we load the data on your storage device onto Amazon S3. For more information, go to Amazon Simple Storage Service.
