Snowflake is a data warehouse that is built on the cloud infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. This cloud-based platform allows for storage and computing to scale independently, and is provided as a software as a service (SaaS). All three layers of the Snowflake architecture – storage, processing, and cloud services – are fully deployed and managed on the selected cloud platform. Snowflake was first available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and the two companies have many joint customers.
The data platform as a service means that enterprises can have an enterprise-class data warehouse based on the enterprise-class AWS cloud without the complexity and cost of traditional solutions. Companies such as Petco and Instacart have used Snowflake on AWS to transform their businesses for the next generation. Snowflake is a cloud data warehouse that is built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure, and is a true SaaS offering. There is no hardware or software that needs to be installed, configured, or managed; Snowflake takes care of all ongoing maintenance, management, and adjustment.
After choosing your location, you can select the Snowflake edition and one of the three cloud platforms you can use. Snowflake offers capabilities for data exchange, communication between regions and clouds without the need to use data silos or ETL processes. The cloud platform you choose for each Snowflake account is completely independent of your other Snowflake accounts. Depending on the applications and usage, Snowflake can be expensive compared to its competitors, such as Redshift.
In addition to predefined system roles, Snowflake offers flexibility to create custom roles that can also be created using the USERADMIN role (or a higher role) and any role that has been granted the CREATE ROLE privilege. Major cloud providers such as GCP, Microsoft Azure, and AWS can be used with Snowflake integration to create modern cloud data storage solutions. Snowflake cloud services work on ANSI SQL, allowing users to manage data infrastructure and optimize data. The service layer is fully maintained by Snowflake and runs on processing instances provided by Snowflake from the cloud provider.
Data objects stored in Snowflake can only be accessed using SQL queries through the processing layer and are hidden from users.In this blog, we'll introduce the value and challenges of cloud data warehouses and take an in-depth look at Snowflake, the leading cloud-independent data storage platform, including its advantages and a comparison with other cloud data platforms. See the Snowflake Understanding Snowflake Table Structures documentation for full information on micropartitioning and clustering data. We strive to offer the same Snowflake experience regardless of the cloud platform you choose for your account; however, some services and features are currently unavailable (or have limited availability) for Snowflake accounts hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
