What is Snoptimizer?

Part 1: What is Snoptimizer™?

Snoptimizer is an application developed by our team at ITS – Snowflake Solutions, led by our Founder, Frank Bell. Frank is undoubtedly one of the world’s foremost experts in Snowflake data optimization and has leveraged his mastery of Snowflake to create this one-of-a-kind automated solution for companies who want to streamline their Snowflake usage.

Snoptimizer™ aggregates the best practices and lessons from Frank’s leading expertise in optimizing Snowflake accounts for companies like Nissan, Fox, Yahoo, and Ticketmaster.

Snoptimizer™ is the first automated cost, performance, and security optimizer application for Snowflake Accounts. It is by far the easiest and fastest way to optimize your Snowflake Account quickly and effectively. The tool service can optimize your Snowflake Account within minutes.

Part 2: Why did we build Snoptimizer?

The reason we built SnoptimizerTM is that we frequently saw Snowflake customers whose accounts were not optimized as much as possible. In nearly all cases, their Snowflake usage was highly inefficient. To address this need, we created Snoptimizer™.

All too often, we were brought in by Snowflake customers for health checks. In 98% of these cases, the customer’s accounts were not optimized as much as we could optimize them. Unfortunately, most of the time their Snowflake usage was actually highly inefficient, and the customer was not using Snowflake as effectively as possible in one or more areas.

Snoptimizer™ was built by Snowflake Data Heroes, an elite group of only 50 worldwide, consultants and product builders who use Snowflake. Our SnoptimizerTM team comprises some of the most experienced Snowflake optimization and migration experts. We have specialized in Snowflake for years, studying every aspect in depth, to provide unparalleled optimization services.

Part 3: The Problem Snoptimizer Solves:

Snowflake is an incredibly scalable and easy-to-use data platform. That said, Snowflake’s data cloud offering is constantly evolving with new features and cost-saving services. Also, the Snowflake database and data cloud concept are relatively new to many administrators and users. While the basics are easy to use compared to other options, optimizing a Snowflake account to maximize efficiency and cost savings is challenging. It requires deep understanding of hundreds of objects like warehouses, resource monitors, query history, materialized views, search optimization, Snowpipe, load history, and more.

A few common customer optimization issues we’ve encountered:

Poorly configured usage. All too often, we see unused consumption credits wasted due to incorrectly configured warehouses. Remember, cost-based consumption services are great until misused. An unoptimized account may experience performance or security issues. Therefore, we analyzed every area of Snowflake metadata views and developed the most advanced optimizations for cost, performance, and security beyond anything documented or available elsewhere.
Incorrect storage settings or architecture. We often find suboptimal Snowflake settings during health checks, like 10- to 90-day time travel enabled for objects that don’t need it. We also see inefficient lift-and-shift migrations that keep drop-and-recreate architectures which make no sense in Snowflake.
Inefficient warehouse setup. This is one of the first issues we typically fix, often saving our customers hundreds of dollars each day.
Accounts with Significant Cost Risks. As we stated in previous blog posts here at ITS Snowflake Solutions, Snowflake enables awesome scale but if misconfigured it also has major cost risks by default due to its consumption-based pricing, especially for compute and larger warehouses. These is the Snowflake Cost Risks we discussed previously.

Part 4: What does Snoptimizer™ do?

Snoptimizer continuously monitors your Snowflake account in three major areas: cost, security, and performance. It scans over 40 Snowflake views to detect anti-patterns that waste resources or hurt performance and security. Snoptimizer is the only service that continuously optimizes your Snowflake account to maximize efficiency and cost savings.

Let’s dive deeper into the three main areas Snoptimizer streamlines on Snowflake usage:

Cost Optimization:

The Snoptimizer Cost Optimization service regularly reviews ongoing Warehouse and Resource Monitor configurations. It promptly fixes any incorrectly configured Account settings.

The Snoptimizer service continually optimizes your Snowflake account(s) to reduce costs. It can automatically apply optimizations or require approval before changes. Snoptimizer is your best tool for minimizing Snowflake costs.

Snowflake’s RDBMS and DDL/DML are easy to use, but warehouses and compute optimization are also easy to misconfigure. Snoptimizer eliminates this inefficiency and waste in Snowflake computing and storage.

Performance Optimization:

The Snoptimizer team analyzes your Snowflake query history and related data to identify warehouses that are over-provisioned or under-provisioned. We are the only service that automates Snowflake performance optimization and provides recommendations, such as:

Right-sizing warehouses to match your workload
Leveraging other Snowflake cost-saving features
Consolidating unused warehouses
Enabling Auto Clustering
Using Materialized Views
Optimizing Search

We review your Snowflake account to find ways to improve performance and lower costs. Our recommendations are tailored to your specific usage patterns and needs.

Security Optimization:

Snoptimizer is one of your best tools for improving Snowflake security. It continuously monitors your Snowflake account for risks that could compromise your data or account. Since security often depends on company culture, we provide recommendations and best practices to help prevent account breaches and data leaks. Snoptimizer Security Optimization performs frequent checks to identify misconfigurations or vulnerabilities that could be exploited.

Snoptimizer Core Features:

Analyzes Snowflake data warehouses to identify inefficient settings
Immediately limits “cost exposure” from computing resources
Reviews previous queries and usage to optimize performance and efficiency
Provides regular reports on Snowflake usage
Creates effective monitors for each warehouse’s resources
Offers recommendations and automation to optimize your setup
Incorporates Snowflake’s best practices for cost optimization, including some undocumented tips

Part 5: What results can you expect from using Snoptimizer?

On average, we’ve seen 10-30% cost savings, thousands of security issues fixed, and hundreds of performance problems solved in our tests.
In some implementations, we’ve achieved up to 43% cost savings.

Part 6: Try Snoptimizer™ today!

Try Snoptimizer today. Sign up and schedule a personal demo with us!

Visit our Website to Explore Snoptimizer

To Recap… How Snoptimizer Helps You

Snoptimizer quickly and automatically optimizes your Snowflake account for security, cost, and performance.
It eliminates headaches and concerns about security risks and cost overruns across your Snowflake account.
It prevents you from making costly mistakes.

In short, Snoptimizer makes managing your Snowflake cost, performance, and security much easier and more automated.
Optimization in a few hours, hassle-free. Get optimized today!

Part 7: Conclusion

The Snowflake Data Cloud continues expanding, and though easy to use, optimizing for cost, security, and performance remains challenging. Snoptimizer makes optimization effortless and affordable, saving you from cost overruns and security issues.

We’d love to help streamline your Snowflake use, optimize data cloud costs, and leverage this tech to boost your business as much as possible.