Amazon Web Services Import/Export – fill your S3 buckets without killing your bandwidth

One of the things about online file storage is getting the first massive data dump onto the server.  If you have a lot of data to store, it would be more prudent to simply take an external drive to the physical data center and do a transfer that way.

That’s what Amazon is proposing as high level service with their newly announced Import/Export product.

The premise here is that you can fill up an portable storage device and ship it to Amazon for them to copy to your S3 bucket(s).  The authenication is handled by a separate email that explains what is on the device and where to put, as well as the credentials for the bucket itself.

It sounds like a great idea – I just wish I could get into the beta. :)

more later – joel.