Transfer Appliance is a high-capacity storage device that lets youtransfer and securely ship your data to a Google upload facility, where weupload your data to Cloud Storage. For Transfer Appliancecapacities and requirements, refer to theSpecifications page.

How it works

	Request an appliance: We'll work with you to select the appropriate appliance for your requirements.
	Upload your data: Linux and Apple macOS systems mount the NFS share exposed by the appliance. Windows systems use SCP or SSH to upload data to the appliance.
	Ship the appliance back: Complete the transfer and seal the appliance.
	Google uploads the data: We upload the data to your Cloud Storage bucket, then wipe the appliance when we're done.
	Transfer is complete! You can now access your data in Google Cloud.

Security features

Your data and network security is important. Transfer Appliance helpsensure that you're connecting a trusted device to your equipment andnetwork, and secures your data from end to end so that it is read by peopleyou trust.

To ensure Transfer Appliance is trusted and safe to connect to yourdevices, Transfer Appliance offers the following features:

• Tamper resistant: Bad actors cannot easily openTransfer Appliance's physical case. We also applytamper-evident tags to the shipping case, so that you can visually inspecteach appliance's integrity prior to opening the package.

• Ruggedized: Transfer Appliance's shipping container isruggedized, ensuring your data arrives safely.

• Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip: We validate the TPM's PlatformConfiguration Registers to ensure that the immutable root filesystem andsoftware components haven't been tampered with.

• Hardware attestation: We use a remote attestation process to validatethe appliance before you can connect it to your device and copy data to it.If anything is amiss, we work with you to quickly send you a new appliance.

To ensure your data is safe during and after transit,Transfer Appliance uses the following features to protect you:

• AES 256 encryption: Your data is encrypted with industry-standardencryption to keep it safe.

• Customer-managed encryption keys: We use encryption keys that you manageusing Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS), enabling you to control and secureyour data prior to shipping an appliance back to us.

• NIST 800-88 compliant data erasure: We securely erase your data fromTransfer Appliance after uploading your data toCloud Storage. You can request a wipe certificate to verify that we'vewiped your data.

For more information, refer toSecurity and encryption.

Performance

To enable you move data quickly and efficiently,Transfer Appliance has the following performance features:

• All SSD drives: Increased reliability over hard disk drives to ensureyour transfer is smooth.

• Multiple network connectivity options: Quickly move data from yourdevices to Transfer Appliance, using either a 10Gbps RJ45 interfaceor a 40Gbps QSFP+ interface.

• Scalability with multiple appliances: You can scale your transfers byordering multiple appliance to increase your transfer speed.

• Globally distributed processing: Reduced shipping times to and fromGoogle ensures your data transfer to Cloud Storage is quick.

• Minimal software: For Linux and Apple macOS systems, copy directlyto Transfer Appliance by mounting the exposed NFS share onthe appliance to your workstation, using common software already installedon the system. For Microsoft Windows systems, copy directly toTransfer Appliance from your workstation using SCP.

Online capabilities

Enabling online mode allows you to perform online transfers by streaming datadirectly to your Cloud Storage bucket after copying it to your appliance.Online transfers offer the following benefits:

• Quickly transfer data to Cloud Storage with low latency: Onlinetransfers are an accelerated method of transferring your data toCloud Storage, omitting the need to wait for your appliance to be shippedback to Google before the data is copied to your destination bucket.

• Connect to multiple appliances: Online mode allows parallel connectivityto multiple appliances.

• Cost-effective: Online capability is offered as a low-cost, fully-managedmethod for transferring your data.

• Secure connection: Your data is encrypted during online transfers,ensuring end-to-end security. After the transfer is complete, your data isremoved from the appliance.

• Easy to enable or disable: You can toggle between online and offline modeusing simple commands. For more information on how to enable or disable onlinemode, refer to theOnline/offline transfer page.

Is Transfer Appliance suitable for me?

Transfer Appliance is a good fit for your data transfer needs if:

• You are an existing Google Cloud customer.
• Your data resides in locations that Transfer Appliance isavailable.
• It would take more than one week to upload your data over the network.

Other transfer options

Other Google Cloud transfer options include:

• Storage Transfer Service to move data to aCloud Storage bucket from other cloud storage providers or from youron-premises storage.

• BigQuery Data Transfer Service to move data from software as aservice (SaaS) applications to BigQuery.

• Transfer service for on-premises data to move data from youron-premises machines to Cloud Storage.

Where is Transfer Appliance available?

Transfer Appliance is available in the following locations:

For a complete list of countries where Transfer Appliance is available, refer to the Order Appliance page on the Google Cloud console. If you don't find your country listed, reach out to Support at data-support@google.com.

Data transfer speeds

With a typical network bandwidth of 100 Mbps, 300 terabytes of data takes about9 months to upload. However, with Transfer Appliance, you canreceive the appliance and capture 300 terabytes of data in under 25 days. Yourdata can be accessed in Cloud Storage within another 25 days, all withoutconsuming any outbound network bandwidth.

Example use cases

Data collection

If you need to transfer data from researchers, vendors, or other sites toGoogle Cloud, Transfer Appliance can move that data for you. Oncetransferred toCloud Storage orBigQuery,your data is accessible via our Dataflow processing service for machinelearning projects. Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine is a managed servicethat enables you to easily build machine learning models, that work on any typeof data, of any size.

Data replication

Transfer Appliance can assist you in taking advantage of hybridarchitectures, supporting current operations with existing on-premisesinfrastructure while experimenting with the cloud. By transferring a copy ofyour data to Google Cloud, you can decommission duplicate datasets, test cloudinfrastructure, and expose your data to machine learning and analysis.

Data migration

Offline data transfer is suited for moving large amounts of existing backupimages and archives to Cloud Storage, which can be stored in ultra low-cost,highly-durable, and highly available storage classes such asArchive Storage. For structured andunstructured data sets, whether they are small and frequently accessed or hugeand rarely referenced, Google offers solutions like Cloud Storage,BigQuery, and Dataproc to store and analyze that data.

Data handling for the European Union

For customers in the EU, appliances are shipped from Belgium. Whendata capture is complete, you ship the appliance to Belgium for data upload.Your data is then uploaded to a Cloud Storage location in a regionthat you have specified. If you choose a destination region within the EU, yourdata never leaves the boundaries of the European Union during any part of thedata transfer process.

What's next?

• Request Transfer Appliance.
• Learn more about Transfer Appliance pricing.
• Review the procedure for using Transfer Appliance.