AWS Snowball Edge now supports Windows operating systems

Posted on: Nov 9, 2020

AWS Snowball Edge now supports Windows operating systems, including Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, and Windows Server 2019. Previously, you were able to run instances on Snowball devices using either the Ubuntu or CentOS Linux operating systems. Now, with support for Windows, you can run your Windows-based workloads at the edge on Snowball Edge Compute Optimized and Snowball Edge Storage Optimized devices.  

In order to use Windows on Snowball devices, you must have an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that your account owns and you must bring your own license (BYOL). There are two options for adding AMIs you own to your Snowball device. The first option is to import your Windows-based virtual machine image into AWS using the AWS VM Import/Export service. After importing the image, register it as an AMI and then select that AMI when you create your Snow job. Alternatively, if your Snow device is already onsite, you can import virtual machine images to your device directly.  

Support for Windows is available in all AWS Regions where AWS Snowball is available. To learn more, visit the AWS Snowball documentation and AWS Snowball product page. Log into the AWS Snow Family console to get started.