AWS Snowball
Developer Guide

This guide is for the Snowball Edge. If you are looking for documentation for the Snowball, see the AWS Snowball User Guide.

Setting Up Your AWS Access for AWS Snowball Edge

Before you use AWS Snowball for the first time, you need to complete the following tasks:

  1. Sign Up for AWS.


    In the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) AWS Region service is provided by Amazon Internet Services Private Limited (AISPL). For information on siging up for Amazon Web Services in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) AWS Region, see Signing Up for AISPL.

  2. Create an IAM User.

Sign Up for AWS

When you sign up for Amazon Web Services (AWS), your AWS account is automatically signed up for all services in AWS, including AWS Snowball. You are charged only for the services that you use. For more information about pricing and fees for AWS Snowball, see AWS Snowball Edge Pricing. AWS Snowball is not free to use; for more information on what AWS services are free, see AWS Free Usage Tier.


To create an AWS account

  1. Open, and then choose Create an AWS Account.


    If you previously signed in to the AWS Management Console using AWS account root user credentials, choose Sign in to a different account. If you previously signed in to the console using IAM credentials, choose Sign-in using root account credentials. Then choose Create a new AWS account.

  2. Follow the online instructions.

    Part of the sign-up procedure involves receiving a phone call and entering a verification code using the phone keypad.

Note your AWS account number, because you'll need it for the next task.

Create an IAM User

Services in AWS, such as AWS Snowball, require that you provide credentials when you access them, so that the service can determine whether you have permission to access its resources. AWS recommends not using the root credentials of your AWS account to make requests. Instead, create an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user, and grant that user full access. We refer to these users as IAM users with administrator-level credentials.

You can use the administrator user credentials, instead of root credentials of your account, to interact with AWS and perform tasks, such as to create an Amazon S3 bucket, create users, and grant them permissions. For more information, see Root Account Credentials vs. IAM User Credentials in the AWS General Reference and IAM Best Practices in IAM User Guide.

If you signed up for AWS but have not created an IAM user for yourself, you can create one using the IAM console.

To create an IAM user for yourself and add the user to an Administrators group

  1. Use your AWS account email address and password to sign in as the AWS account root user to the IAM console at



  2. In the navigation pane of the console, choose Users, and then choose Add user.

  3. For User name, type Administrator.

  4. Select the check box next to AWS Management Console access, select Custom password, and then type the new user's password in the text box. You can optionally select Require password reset to force the user to create a new password the next time the user signs in.

  5. Choose Next: Permissions.

  6. On the Set permissions page, choose Add user to group.

  7. Choose Create group.

  8. In the Create group dialog box, for Group name type Administrators.

  9. For Filter policies, select the check box for AWS managed - job function.



  12. Choose Next: Tags to add metadata to the user by attaching tags as key-value pairs.


You can use this same process to create more groups and users, and to give your users access to your AWS account resources. To learn about using policies to restrict users' permissions to specific AWS resources, go to Access Management and Example Policies.

To sign in as this new IAM user, sign out of the AWS Management Console, then use the following URL, where your_aws_account_id is your AWS account number without the hyphens (for example, if your AWS account number is 1234-5678-9012, your AWS account ID is 123456789012).

Type the IAM user name and password that you just created. When you're signed in, the navigation bar displays "your_user_name @ your_aws_account_id".

If you don't want the URL for your sign-in page to contain your AWS account ID, you can create an account alias. From the IAM dashboard, choose Create Account Alias and type an alias, such as your company name. To sign in after you create an account alias, use the following URL.

To verify the sign-in link for IAM users for your account, open the IAM console and check under AWS Account Alias on the dashboard.

If you're going to create AWS Snowball jobs through an IAM user that is not an administrator user, that user needs certain permissions to use the AWS Snowball Management Console effectively. For more information on those permissions, see Permissions Required to Use the AWS Snowball Console.

Next Step

Getting Started with an AWS Snowball Edge Device