What is Snoptimizer?

Hmmm.  What is Snoptimizer™?

Snoptimizer™ is the first automated Cost, Performance, and Security Optimizer for Snowflake Accounts.  It is by far the easiest and fastest way to optimize your Snowflake Account quickly.  This unique service can optimize your Snowflake Account within minutes.  It is a no-brainer to test out.  Signup here for a fast and easy 10 day free trial.

From a high level, Snoptimizer™ can be quickly setup by your ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATOR role on Snowflake within minutes.  What have you got to lose?

Okay.  Snoptimizer sounds cool.  What does Snoptimizer really do?  
Also, why did you build Snoptimizer?  The reason we built Snoptimizer™ because we saw a tremendous need in the marketplace.   All too often we were brought in by existing Snowflake customers for Snowflake Health checks and 98% of the time the customers’ Account was not optimized as much as we could optimize it.  Unfortunately, most of the time it was actually “highly” unoptimized and the customer was not using Snowflake as effectively as it could in one or many areas.  To solve this need we built Snoptimizer™.

Snoptimizer was built by longtime Snowflake Data Heroes [Only 50 in the world], consultants, and Snowflake Powered-By product builders.  Our Snoptimizer team is composed of some of the deepest experts in Snowflake optimization and migration.  We have lived, breathed, and eaten Snowflake for several years and studied every area of Snowflake in depth in order to provide you an unparalleled optimization service.

Problem Statement that Snoptimizer Solves:  Snowflake is an amazingly scalable and easy to use consumption based Data As a Service.  Simple put, its an amazing Cloud RDBMS that scales like nothing I had seen before.  That being said, The Snowflake Data Cloud offering is changing and growing with new functionality and cost related services constantly.  Also, the Snowflake database and overall Snowflake Data Cloud conceptually is relatively new for many new Snowflake administrators and users.  While the RDBMS basics are relatively easy to use compared to past solutions and other analytical data solutions, it is definitely NOT easy to fully optimize a Snowflake Account to get the most efficiency and cost savings possible.  This requires in-depth understanding of hundreds of different views and objects.  You need to deeply understand how warehouses, resource monitors, query_history, materialized views, search optimization, snowpipe, load_history, etc. etc.  operate and their core level.  So quickly and easily Snoptimize your Snowflake Account now!

A few Customer Optimization Problems we have seen. 

*Poorly configured consumption.  Too often we see unneeded consumption credits wasted by incorrectly setup warehouses.  Remember, cost-consumption based services are AWESOME until they are incorrectly used.  We covered long ago how Snowflake costs and cost risks you are exposed to can add up fast in this Cost Risk article.   can   well optimized than we would see performance issues or security issues with the account.  Therefore we scoured every areas of Snowflake meta data views and created the most advanced optimizations around cost, performance, and security beyond anything documented or available anywhere else.

*Incorrect Storage based settings and/or architectures.   Again, we come into Snowflake Health Checks and find some interesting settings with 10, 20, 30, 90 day time travel settings across objects that do not require this level of time-travel.  Or we see lift and shift migrations that retain drop and recreate architectures which make no sense in a Snowflake Account.

*Warehouse with inefficient settings.   This is one of the most common issues we fix immediately that often saves our customers hundreds of dollars daily.

*Accounts with HUGE Cost Risk Exposure.   As we stated in previous blog posts here at ITS Snowflake Solutions, Snowflake brings awesome scale but if not correctly “Snoptimized” it also has extensive cost risks by default with its consumption-based pricing especially around compute and larger warehouses.  This is the Snowflake Cost Risks we wrote about previously.  Extreme Risks with a 6XL on AWS.

Snowflake Cost Risk Use Case 6XL – 1 cluster:
*Cost per hour @ $3/credit = 3 * 512 = $1536
*okay – so right now – 5XL and 6XL are in private preview ONLY on AWS so then… 
What’s your cost exposure with a 4XL on ONLY 1 cluster?
Snowflake Cost Risk Use Case 4XL – 1 cluster:
*Cost EXPOSURE per hour @ $3/credit = 3 * 256 = $768 PER HOUR
*Within 7 hours you go through $5,376k
*Within 14 hours your ACCOUNT spend is:  $10,752

Again, with great power and with Ease of Use also comes great responsibility.  While we have loved Snowflake and its ease of use, we also have done so many Snowflake health checks where Snoptimizer™ picks up and fixes Account problems where customers re-sized warehouses EASILY [yes, you can do it via the interface or via command line in seconds – it is BOTH awesome and dangerous to untrained users WHO HAVE create/alter warehouse GRANTED ROLES] but unnecessarily.  Unfortunately, even for Snowflake data professionals and administrative experts it is ALL too easy to change Warehouse settings for a simple test or even for their QA team and miss re-setting them or auto suspending them.  A good analogy we use is UNOPTIMIZED Snowflake ACCOUNTS often allow users to drive over non-existent or POORLY setup Snowflake Cost Guardrails.

What does Snoptimizer™ do?

Snoptimizer runs regularly and scours your Snowflake Operations Account Meta Data (Over 40 Views) continuously looking for Snowflake storage and compute anti-patterns and inefficiencies related to cost, performance, and security.  It is the only continuous service watching out for you and your Snowflake Account to keep it in tip top shape!

Let’s dive deeper:

Snoptimizer™ – Snowflake Cost Optimization:

The Snoptimizer Cost Optimization service regularly evaluates ongoing queries and settings related to Warehouses and Resource Monitors.  It immediately removes incorrectly setup Accounts specifications.   service.

The Snoptimizer service repeatedly works for you and regularly looks at your Snowflake Account(s) and finds any areas that can be optimized for costs.  The service can be set for automatic optimization settings or settings that must be approved.  Snoptimizer is your best friend for optimizing costs on your Snowflake Account.

Again, Snowflake RDBMS and DDL, DML basics are easy to use BUT misconfiguration of warehouses and compute optimization services are ALSO EASY to do.  Snoptimizer removes this unnecessary inefficient and unoptimized use of Snowflake compute and storage.

Snoptimizer™ – Snowflake Performance Optimization:

The Snoptimizer Team not only scours cost optimizations but at the same time we look at all of your query_history and related views and we can pick up both warehouses that are over provisioned and under provisioned.  We are the only service we know of that automates this for you and provides suggestions on Warehouse changes or even that you should use other Snowflake cost based services that provide awesome benefits such as:

  • Auto Clustering
  • Materialized Views
  • Search Optimization

Snoptimizer™ – Snowflake Security Optimization:

Again, Snoptimizer is one of your best Snowflake automated administrative friends for security issues.  It repeatedly checks for security issues related to your Snowflake Account that put your account and data at risk.  Since security is specialized often at a company culture level we provide optimizations and best practices that you can implement to avoid account and data breaches.  Snoptimizer Security Optimization itself runs many many security checks repeatedly looking for incorrect security configurations or exposures.

If all of that wasn’t enough for you… let’s highlight some Snoptimizer Core Features:

Snoptimizer Core Features:

  • Analyzes Snowflake Compute Warehouses for inefficient settings
  • Limits Compute Resources “Risk Cost Exposure” Immediately
  • Reviews Previous Queries and Consumption for performance and efficiency
  • Provides regular reporting on Snowflake Usage
  • Creates effective Resource Monitors per warehouse
  • Provides Optimization Recommendations and Automations depending on your setup
  • Incorporates every single documented and “some undocumented” Snowflake Cost Optimization Best Practice and more
  • How does Snoptimizer Help You?

It very quickly and automatically goes in and runs automated Snowflake security, cost, and performance optimization checks and best practices immediately against our Snoptimizer customer accounts.  It removes all the headaches and worries of security and cost exposure across your entire Snowflake Account.  It removes you from mistakenly falling into the Snowflake Cost Anti-patterns.

At a high-level it just makes your Snowflake Cost, Performance, and Security Administration easier and automated for you.  No hassle optimization in a few hours. Get Snoptimized today!

Conclusion:

The Snowflake Data Cloud continues to grow and while its easy to use its much harder to optimize for cost, security, and performance.  Snoptimizer makes cost, performance, and security optimization easy for you at low cost and saves you the headaches of cost overruns or security exposures.

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