Recently, Google has announced the Transfer Appliance availability in EU market for the offline data transfer to the Google Cloud Platform. Transfer Appliance is a high capacity rack mountable hardware device which can securely migrate your data to the cloud. Snowball is similar device which use in the Amazon Web Services to migrate the data offline in to the AWS Cloud Platform.
As I’m a big fan of Google Cloud Platform I was reading few articles and my colleagues asked about this appliance so I thought to share some information about this hardware appliance with my followers.
This appliance can be found in 100TB and 480TB versions, you can order the device, fill it with the data and ship to the data ingest location to upload the data to the cloud.
Let’s take a look at the appliances
100 TB Appliance
480 TB Appliance
Specification Differences Of These Appliances
| Specification | TA100 | TA480 |
| Model type | 100TB 2 rack unit, rackable | 480TB 4 rack unit, non-rackable unit case in shipping crate |
| Packaging and shipment handling | Top loader case. Can rack after receiving Transfer Appliance. | Racked 4 rack unit case with shelves. TA480 must remain in the case at all times. |
| Usable space capacity | Minimum of 80TB compressed and encrypted data Note: Actual usable capacity will vary. |
Minimum of 420TB of compressed and encrypted data. Note: Actual usable capacity will vary. |
| Dimensions | 38″ x 27″ x 15″ | 56″ x 40″ x 36″ |
| Weight | 126 pounds | 536 pounds |
| Power requirements | 100-240 V, 50-60 Hz, 11-4.5 Amp | 100-120Vac / 12.5-9.5A / 50-60Hz 200-220Vac / 10-9.5A / 50-60Hz 220-230Vac / 10-9.8A / 50-60Hz 230-240Vac / 10-9.8A / 50-60Hz 200-240Vac / 11.8-9.8A / 50-60Hz (UL/cUL only) |
| Heat load | Power consumption: 400 Watts Heat load: 1500 BTU/hour | Power consumption: 1300 Watts Heat load: 4500 BTU/hour |
| Supported Linux operating systems | Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or 14.04 LTS RHEL 6.4, 6.8, 7.0 or 7.2 CentOS 6.4, 6.8, 7.0 or 7.2 | Ubuntu 12.04 LTS or 14.04 LTS RHEL 6.4, 6.8, 7.0 or 7.2 CentOS 6.4, 6.8, 7.0 or 7.2 |
| Supported Microsoft Windows operating systems | Windows 2012 R2 Windows 2012 Windows 2008 R2 Windows 2008-64 bit Windows 2008-32 bit | Windows 2012 R2 Windows 2012 Windows 2008 R2 Windows 2008-64 bit Windows 2008-32 bit |
| Supported browsers | Latest stable version of Chrome. | Latest stable version of Chrome. |
| Network | 4x RJ-45 ports that can operate at 10Gbps. | 4x RJ-45 ports that can operate at 10Gbps. |
| Fiber optic | Model: Intel FTLX8571D3BCV-IT 1G/10G Dual-Rate SFP+ optical transceiver Form Factor: Plug-in module Interfaces: 1 x Ethernet 10GBase-SW/10GBase-SR – LC multi-mode x 2 Connectivity Technology: Wired Cabling Type: 1000Base-SX, 10GBase-SR, 10GBase-SW Data Link Protocol: Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet Data Transfer Rate: 10.3 Gbps Optical Wave Length: 850 nm Max Transfer Distance: 984 ft | Model: Intel FTLX8571D3BCV-IT 1G/10G Dual-Rate SFP+ optical transceiver Form Factor: Plug-in module Interfaces: 1 x Ethernet 10GBase-SW/10GBase-SR – LC multi-mode x 2 Connectivity Technology: Wired Cabling Type: 1000Base-SX, 10GBase-SR, 10GBase-SW Data Link Protocol: Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet Data Transfer Rate: 10.3 Gbps Optical Wave Length: 850 nm Max Transfer Distance: 984 ft |
| Items shipped with Transfer Appliance | Packing list Instruction manual(s) 2 Nema 5-15P power cables 1 set of Rack Mount Rails 3 colored, numbered tamper prevention seals (1 green, 1 blue, 1 orange) (Optional) 2 network adapters: 10G fiber SFP+ | Packing list Unpacking/packing instructions Instruction manual(s) 2 Nema 5-15P power cables (Optional) 4 Network adapters: 10G fiber SFP+ 6 colored, numbered tamper prevention seals (2 green, 2 blue, 2 orange) |
What Are Data Capture Jobs?
Data Capture Jobs are used to copy your data from your network to a Transfer Appliance. Basically, there three main data capture jobs available.
- Workstation Capture: A Capturing utility must be installed on a Windows or Linux machine and it stream the data to the appliance
- NFS Capture: Capture data directly from a Network File System (NFS)
- NFS Export: Allow Transfer appliance to export directories via NFS
How To Request Transfer Appliance?
Login to the Google Cloud Platform Console, Go to Menu -> Storage -> Transfer Appliance
Provide the project name, rough estimate about the amount of data that you are planning to upload to the cloud, business name, business domain name and country and submit the request. Confirmation of the request will be sent to the registered email address.
How to Monitor The Appliance Status
Web user interface can be used to monitor the tasks such as the status of the capturing jobs, retry capturing jobs, disk status, monitor storage usage, etc.
Once you performed the successful data capturing and you are ready to ship the Appliance to the ingest location. Shutdown the appliance enter the packing checklist, which you received and place the checklist with the shipping container, attach the orange temper-evident seals. After that email to the Appliance Transfer Support to request a shipping label. Once you receive the shipping label schedule a carrier pick up following the provided instructions.
This is just the high level overview of this product and I look forward to publishing more articles later.
References:
Article Short Link: https://tcrum.net/GoogleTransferAppliance
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