Why Snowflake separates compute from storage - See It in Action

Why Snowflake Separates Compute from Storage

📖 Scenario: Imagine you run a busy online store. You want your data system to be fast, flexible, and cost-effective. Snowflake is a cloud data platform that helps by separating compute power from storage space.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Snowflake setup that shows how compute and storage are separate. You will create a storage area, a compute warehouse, and link them to see how they work independently.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a database to hold data (storage)

Create a warehouse to process queries (compute)

Show how to use the warehouse to query data from the database

Demonstrate that storage and compute can scale separately

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Many companies use Snowflake to store large amounts of data and run fast queries without paying for unused compute power.

💼 Career

Understanding compute and storage separation is key for cloud data engineers and architects working with Snowflake or similar cloud data platforms.

1

Create a database for storage

Write a Snowflake SQL command to create a database called store_data which will hold your data separately from compute.

Snowflake

-- Your code here to create the database

Need a hint?

Use the CREATE DATABASE command with the exact name store_data.

2

Create a warehouse for compute

Write a Snowflake SQL command to create a warehouse called compute_wh that will handle query processing separately from storage.

Snowflake

CREATE DATABASE store_data;
-- Your code here to create the warehouse

Need a hint?

Use CREATE WAREHOUSE with the name compute_wh. Set size to SMALL and enable auto suspend and resume.

3

Use the warehouse to query the database

Write Snowflake SQL commands to use the warehouse compute_wh and the database store_data. Then create a simple table products with columns id and name inside store_data.

Snowflake

CREATE DATABASE store_data;
CREATE WAREHOUSE compute_wh WITH WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'SMALL' WAREHOUSE_TYPE = 'STANDARD' AUTO_SUSPEND = 60 AUTO_RESUME = TRUE;
-- Your code here to use warehouse and database, then create table

Need a hint?

Use USE WAREHOUSE and USE DATABASE commands. Then create the products table with id and name columns.

4

Show scaling compute and storage separately

Write Snowflake SQL commands to resize the warehouse compute_wh to MEDIUM without changing the database store_data. This shows compute scaling separately from storage.

Snowflake

CREATE DATABASE store_data;
CREATE WAREHOUSE compute_wh WITH WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'SMALL' WAREHOUSE_TYPE = 'STANDARD' AUTO_SUSPEND = 60 AUTO_RESUME = TRUE;
USE WAREHOUSE compute_wh;
USE DATABASE store_data;
CREATE TABLE products (id INT, name STRING);
-- Your code here to resize warehouse

Need a hint?

Use ALTER WAREHOUSE to change the size of compute_wh to MEDIUM.