Snowflake vs AWS: What is the difference between Snowflake and AWS

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Data is a critical component of business intelligence. Successful firms make decisions based on facts. Furthermore, every firm needs a safe location to store acquired data for subsequent analysis. Cloud-based data warehouses are rapidly gaining popularity as the preferred storage option.

AWS and Snowflake are two well-known companies in this sector that offer comparable services. They are large-scale data analytics databases capable of interpreting and analyzing massive quantities of data. In this article, we'll compare Snowflake and AWS to help you decide which one to choose. 

Table of Contents

  • What is Snowflake?
  • What is AWS?
  • Snowflake: Pros & Cons
  • AWS: Pros & Cons
  • Snowflake vs AWS: Comparison
  • Conclusion

What is Snowflake?

Snowflake is a cloud-based data warehouse that provides scalable and reliable storage as a service. It was developed by Cloudera. Despite the fact that Snowflake is a totally standalone service, it may be used in conjunction with Azure or Google Cloud. It could also connect to and make use of some AWS services, if necessary.

Snowflake is built around a flexible, quicker, and simple-to-use architecture that enables seamless data exchange while also addressing concurrency-related problems. Snowflake's design enables you to create numerous data warehouses based on the same analytics; data scientists and developers can receive what they need, including inquiries, at a rapid speed and without interruption thanks to Snowflake's distributed architecture.

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What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure cloud computing platform that enables organizations to scale and grow by providing computational power, database storage, content delivery, and other capabilities. In a nutshell, AWS enables you to perform the following tasks:

  • Cloud-based web and application servers for hosting dynamic websites.
  • Securely save all of your data in the cloud for easy access from any location.
  • Information is stored in controlled databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc.
  • Utilize a Content Delivery Network to rapidly distribute static and dynamic data around the globe.

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Snowflake: Pros & Cons

The Advantages of Using the Snowflake Data Warehouse

  • The Capacity of Storage - Snowflake may be operated on Microsoft Azure, a cost-effective, scalable, and user-friendly cloud-based storage solution. Furthermore, it has a big storage capacity, making it more suitable for organizations that deal with a lot of data.

  • Multi-Cloud - While many businesses choose Microsoft Azure, Snowflake may also be hosted on other major cloud platforms, including Google Cloud and AWS. With these three hosting choices, Snowflake integration offers an excellent data warehouse alternative for businesses in a variety of sectors.

  • The Capacity of the Server - While existing data warehouses require a huge investment in workstations and other infrastructure, Snowflake provides significantly increased capacity without requiring equipment upgrades. Everything is cloud-based with Snowflake, which means it can be deployed on a minute size and then scaled up or down according to the business's needs.

  • Security - Numerous companies deal with sensitive data and want it to be safeguarded appropriately. Snowflake's background technology includes IP whitelisting, which restricts data access to only verified, authorized individuals. 

  • Tuning for Performance - Snowflake databases are extremely user-friendly and let users arrange data any way they desire. Snowflake is meant to be a highly reliable platform that operates effectively on its own—it does not require continual monitoring by an expert.

  • Disaster Recovery - Certain companies express concern about not building additional server access to the location of such data in the case of a failure. Snowflake datasets have disaster recovery features that guarantee several data centres clone and offer simple access to your data in the event of a disaster.

The Drawbacks of Using the Snowflake Data Warehouse

  • Support for Unstructured Data - Snowflake now supports semi-structured and structured data. However, we anticipate adding support for unstructured data in the future.

  • Loading of Bulk Data - Migrating data to Snowflake may be difficult. Snowflake has Snowpipe for continuous data loading, although it is not always the ideal option.

  • No Data Restriction - While Snowflake is extremely scalable and enables customers to pay for just what they use, there are no data limitations for computing or storage. For many companies, it's all too simple to exceed their service use limits only to discover the error after invoicing.

AWS: Pros & Cons

Advantages of AWS

  • Ease of Use - AWS server interface enables users to access a diverse set of apps and services. Therefore, it makes no difference if you're searching for a robust hosting services platform, a new platform to build SaaS, or a platform to move current applications to.

  • Astonishingly Diverse Selection of Tools - AWS covers database management systems, software, mobile applications, analytics, and networking. In short, it's a one-stop shop for all your cloud computing and information technology needs. It offers a practical foundation on which you may build efficiency and effectiveness.

  • Server Capacity Is Limitless - There is virtually no IT requirement that AWS cannot meet for your organization. Even better, you may expand or contract as needed without fear of service interruption. This limitless capacity is one of the reasons AWS dominates the cloud computing industry. Indeed, this is the service that powers and manages hundreds or even thousands of enterprises and is utilized by over a million organizations worldwide.

  • Secure Encryption & Encryption - One of the primary advantages of AWS is its amazing security and capacity to safeguard your data, IT infrastructure, and much more. AWS delivers a more dependable security solution that ensures the safety and security of your data. 

  • Affordability & Flexibility - One of AWS's primary advantages is its adaptability. With its on-demand infrastructure, there is almost no limit to how much you may consume. AWS offers a variety of alternatives. You may select your favourite operating system, web application framework, and programming language, among other options. The platform enables you to easily integrate any service or product into a virtual ecosystem.

AWS's Disadvantages

  • Billing Can Be Complicated - As incredible as AWS is, it suffers from a significant fault in its invoicing - it can be rather complex. This might be perplexing for the small business owner who is not technically savvy. This is why working through a reseller may be preferable. They will continue to provide the same services, but this time you will comprehend the invoice or invoices.

  • Amazon's EC2 Capacity Limits - The second disadvantage of AWS is that it restricts resource allocation by region. Thus, your location or area can influence the number of resources available to you. Moreover, as a new user, AWS protects you from consuming excessive resources and incurring excessive costs. This is a safeguard meant to deter anyone with bad intent from utilizing the organization's resources to execute hack assaults.

Snowflake vs AWS: Comparison

Factors Snowflake AWS
Data Integration Has built-in features such as STREAMS. It is accomplished through the use of a variety of technologies and tools, including AWS Glue, Athena, and Spark.
Consumption of Data Snowflake supports JDBC, ODBC,.NET, and Go drivers. REST API, JDBC, and ODBC drivers are included.
SQL Interface Inbuilt  Need Athena/Presto 
Data Sharing Across Accounts The data itself is not duplicated or shared with another account. A consumer account is granted read-only access. Using Amazon Quick Sight, you may access files across several accounts.
Consolidation (Data Storage) Compresses the file automatically since it saves data in a columnar manner with a 4:1 compression ratio. It is possible to accomplish this manually using EC2 instances.
Supported Formats Structured & Semi-Structured Data Structured, Semi-Structured & Unstructured Data
Stack Native  The Snowflake partner tools integrate more seamlessly than other solutions. Amazon Stack (Amazon S3 for storage, Amazon Redshift for data warehouse, Amazon Athena for querying, Amazon RDS for database, etc.)

Conclusion

The decision between Snowflake vs AWS will be determined by your available resources and unique business requirements. For instance, if your company is entrusted with handling huge volumes of data, then AWS is an obvious winner. While Snowflake's solution is cost-effective, they may further cut costs by opting for efficient query capabilities at a lower price tag for daily active groups.

Author Bio: 
I’m Sudheer Kuragayala, an enthusiastic Digital Marketer and content writer working at Mindmajix.com. I wrote articles on trending IT-related topics such as  Artificial intelligence, Cloud Technologies, Business Tools, and Softwares. You can reach me on Linkedin: Sudheer Kuragayala

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