We all would like to save money when operating in the cloud, Microsoft has released a stop / start concept for SQL Managed Instances – preview mode!
Azure SQL Managed Instance – Cost Saving!
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Category Archives: Azure
Snowflake Classic UI vs Snowsight
This blog post is not about which User Interface is better, Classic or Snowsight – If anyone does want my feedback on what I like and don’t like about them then I might do another blog post but the aim here today is to show you how to load the classic one as the default experience because when you login to snowflake the snowsight UI is the default one..
Cloning in Snowflake
Cloning is a powerful feature within snowflake (also known as zero copy clone). You can obviously clone at the database or schema level but also tables too. It’s a snapshot of the object when the clone was taken. Its uses pointers to reference back to the original database but it will have its own micro-partitions when you start updating the clone so that is a cost you will need to consider; they are separate objects.
Snowflake – Search Optimisation Service
Rarely do I say I love a feature across any technologies I have come across, in the snowflake world this is right up there.
Snowflake Key Pair Authentication
Snowflake does a great job on documenting the key pair process using bash for Linux environments. That’s great, but what if you need to work within a windows environment and use the command line. Its similar but worth a blog post.
Snowflake Warehouses
Everyone has heard of scaling up and scaling out compute. Have you ever heard about a term called scaling across? Before Snowflake, I never.
Snowflake – Where is the explain/execution plan?
Whatever your database background is you will have heard of an execution / explain plan. Snowflake is no different. Coming from a MS SQL background I was used to reading plans from right to left. Now it is bottom to the top!
Using Snowflake – Hands On
Now let’s start the process of creating a snowflake account in the Azure Cloud. You can sign up for a free trial from here – https://signup.snowflake.com/ I am going to bypass this and go straight to the setup screens. (This is slightly different because as an org-admin I have the power to create accounts)
Select the cloud provider and edition you require; we have already discussed these options before. You know me, its going to be Azure but feel free to dive into AWS or GCP.
Snowflake Architecture – The Basics
At the most basic level, Snowflake has 3 important components. The Cloud services layer, centralised storage layer and the compute layer.
Snowflake Editions
You have decided that snowflake is the technology you want to use to build your next gen data platform, you have decided your cloud provider (Azure, AWS, GCP) then next you need to think about what edition of snowflake suits your business needs?
All About Data 