SnowPro Core Certification: Snowflake Data Cloud Features & Architecture （1/8）

SnowPro Core Certification: Snowflake Data Cloud Features & Architecture （1/8）

Snowflake Architecture

#cloud services layer

The cloud services layer is a collection of services that coordinate activities across Snowflake. These services tie together all of the different components of Snowflake in order to process user requests, from login to query dispatch. The cloud services layer also runs on compute instances provisioned by Snowflake from the cloud provider.

The cloud services layer is responsible for query planning and optimization.

Virtual warehouses perform the query processing, but once a result set has been created, it is stored in the query result cache, which is part of the cloud services layer.

Snowflake's cloud services layer is its brain and is a reliable, always-on service. Snowflake accounts are only accessible via cloud services. All requests to Snowflake, whether via the Snowflake web UI or SnowSQL, travel through this layer.

Services managed in this layer include:

• Authentication

• Infrastructure management

• Metadata management

• Query parsing and optimization

• Access control

https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/intro-key-concepts#cloud-services

#Query Processing

The query processing layer is the compute layer through which queries and data processing jobs are executed on the stored data. The compute layer can have multiple clusters for a given Snowflake instance simultaneously. The compute engines in Snowflake are known as virtual warehouses.

Virtual warehouses perform the query processing, but once a result set has been created, it is stored in the query result cache, which is part of the cloud services layer.  

Query execution is performed in the processing layer. Snowflake processes queries using “virtual warehouses”. Each virtual warehouse is an MPP compute cluster composed of multiple compute nodes allocated by Snowflake from a cloud provider.

Each virtual warehouse is an independent compute cluster that does not share compute resources with other virtual warehouses. As a result, each virtual warehouse has no impact on the performance of other virtual warehouses.

#Database Storage

When data is loaded into Snowflake, Snowflake reorganizes that data into its internal optimized, compressed, columnar format. Snowflake stores this optimized data in cloud storage.

Snowflake's shared storage layer resides on low-cost object cloud storage. Snowflake currently supports AWS S3 storage, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage for data storage.

Snowflake manages all aspects of how this data is stored — the organization, file size, structure, compression, metadata, statistics, and other aspects of data storage are handled by Snowflake. The data objects stored by Snowflake are not directly visible nor accessible by customers; they are only accessible through SQL query operations run using Snowflake.

Snowflake Data Cloud Features

The benefits of The Data Cloud are Access, Governance, and Action (AGA).

• Access means that organizations can easily discover data and share it internally or with third parties without regard to geographical location.

• Governance is about setting policies and rules and protecting the data in a way that can unlock new value and collaboration while maintaining the highest levels of security and compliance.

• Action means you can empower every part of your business with data to build better products, make faster decisions, create new revenue streams, and realize the value of your greatest untapped asset, your data.