Why Snowflake? — DataFactZ

DataFactZ
3 min readMar 22, 2022

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Snowflake is a unique data warehouse that was created for the cloud, tailoring their product to the specific needs of cloud users, with the differentiator being that Snowflake allows you to build your data warehouse & data lake on a single platform while increasing performance dramatically.

Processing Power
Snowflake uses a centralized data storage method by compressing it into blocks, instead of rows and columns. With the ability to divide your data the query process becomes even faster. Alongside their data storage, Snowflake has a large storage capacity, which is ideal for managing a large amount of data.

Grow With your Business Needs
Business needs are not linear, companies often see a changing workload and users accessing cloud data. Snowflake offers scalability, allowing the database to accommodate current company needs.

Large Server Capacity
Snowflake as SaaS is completely online and allows larger, scalable storage capacity that does not require the purchase, maintenance, or upgrading of equipment.

Data Recovery
In the case of data loss Snowflake replicates data servers ensuring peace of mind and easy recovery without the need for a physical backup server.

Secure Data
Snowflake takes multiple steps to ensure your data is only being accessed by authorized users through encryption, the ability to white list IP addresses, two-factor and SSO authentication. This can eliminate risk of unauthorized data access, and data breaches.

Single-language Platform
Snowflake has an intuitive user interface that is flexible to user needs allowing users to organize data in a way that is optimal for their needs. The platform can work smoothly on its own and won’t need continual maintenance from a specialist. Snowflake uses SQL, which is easy to learn for users of all skill levels. With the single-language platform, it is simple to blend, analyze and transform data.

Compatible with your current infrastructure
Snowflake has compatibility in all aspects of data, from migration to management.

You can use Snowflake with major hosting platforms like, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), use multiple coding languages including python and Java, as well as multiple BI Platforms. There is migration compatibility for structured data like CVS and TSV and semi-structured like XML and ORC.

Challenges

As with any cloud platform, knowing full well what challenges can arise before they do can avoid significant costs and heartburn.

No Unstructured Data Support
Currently, snowflake only offers support for structured and semi-structured data. An experienced consultant will usually have many pre-built solutions that can be customized for your specific needs, or develop a highly automated solution that will prep, manage, and integrate your data for optimal structuring.

Slow Data Migration
Migrating data into Snowflake can be challenging, their Snowpipe may not always be the best choice for migrating large amounts of data to the cloud. We can overcome that with our automated cloud migration solutions that can be leveraged to implement and edit the migration process in a fraction of the time.

No Data Constraints = Cost Overruns
Due to the scalability of Snowflake, with their pay for what you use methodology companies can exceed their budget while using the service. Our pre-built monitoring dashboards can help you keep your data use and computing time in check, with the ability to monitor costs.

How does snowflake lower cost?

Eliminate Administration
You can erase administration cost with features like auto-suspend, data sharing and auto-scaling of the warehouse size. The automated system takes away the need for administration tasks tied to scaling, sharing and suspending data. Having an automated system means not forgetting to put data into an idle state and having to pay for the costs attached to active data.

No Upfront Investments
Snowflake as SaaS means you do not need to invest in the hardware to store your data, or the upgrades and maintenance that come with it. Ongoing maintenance and data management is handled by Snowflake. It is scalable to your current business needs, so you won’t be paying for more computing time you aren’t using, or multiple licences that may sit without use.

Pay As You Go
Because of how the data is separated and stored you can use an auto-suspend feature that allows you to only pay for the active data you are storing, along with the hours snowflake is being used, reducing cost.

Originally published at https://datafactz.com on March 22, 2022.

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DataFactZ

DataFactZ is a global data analytics firm, with cutting edge data driven technology solutions.