The first button you press in data engineering is always "where and how do we fetch the data?" No matter how sophisticated your analysis pipeline is, if raw data doesn't flow in reliably, everything stops. Week 2 splits ingestion into batch and streaming, and today we focus on batch ingestion.
Batch ingestion means "collecting data in fixed units (files, tables, time periods) and bringing it all at once." This covers overnight loads when real-time performance isn't required, on-premises migrations, and large bulk transfers. AWS provides different tools depending on data volume, location, and network conditions. Today's four approaches are S3 upload patterns, DataSync, Transfer Family, and the Snow family.