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  5. Amazon Redshift vs Google BigQuery vs Snowflake

Amazon Redshift vs Google BigQuery vs Snowflake

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift
Stacks1.5K
Followers1.4K
Votes108
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Stacks1.8K
Followers1.5K
Votes152
Snowflake
Snowflake
Stacks1.2K
Followers1.2K
Votes27

Amazon Redshift vs Google BigQuery vs Snowflake: What are the differences?

Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Snowflake are popular cloud-based data warehouse solutions that offer scalable and high-performance analytical capabilities. When evaluating these platforms, it's essential to understand their key differences to determine which one best suits your specific needs.

1. **Architecture**: Amazon Redshift uses a Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) architecture, Google BigQuery utilizes a serverless architecture, and Snowflake operates on a multi-cluster shared architecture. Redshift's MPP architecture allows for easy scalability by adding more nodes to the cluster, while BigQuery's serverless architecture eliminates the need for infrastructure management. Snowflake's multi-cluster shared architecture offers separation of storage and compute resources, providing more flexibility in managing workloads.

2. **Pricing Model**: Amazon Redshift follows a pay-as-you-go model with on-demand pricing, Google BigQuery charges based on the amount of data processed, and Snowflake offers separate pricing for storage and compute resources. Redshift may be more cost-effective for steady workloads, while BigQuery's pricing can result in savings for organizations with unpredictable query patterns. Snowflake's pricing model allows for optimizing costs by scaling compute resources based on performance requirements.

3. **Concurrency**: Amazon Redshift offers limited concurrent queries per cluster, Google BigQuery allows unlimited concurrent queries, and Snowflake provides automatic scaling for concurrent workloads. Redshift's concurrency limitations may impact performance during peak usage hours, while BigQuery's unlimited concurrency can efficiently handle multiple queries simultaneously. Snowflake's automatic scaling ensures optimal performance regardless of the level of concurrency.

4. **Data Loading**: Amazon Redshift employs a COPY command for bulk data loading, Google BigQuery supports streaming data ingestion in real-time, and Snowflake facilitates both batch and streaming data loading. Redshift's COPY command is suitable for bulk loading from S3 or DynamoDB, while BigQuery's streaming capabilities enable real-time analytics. Snowflake's support for both batch and streaming loading options offers flexibility in data ingestion methods.

5. **Query Performance**: Amazon Redshift provides performance tuning capabilities through distribution keys and sort keys, Google BigQuery's query performance is optimized with the Dremel execution engine, and Snowflake leverages a query optimizer for efficient data retrieval. Redshift's ability to define distribution and sort keys enhances query performance for specific use cases, while BigQuery's Dremel engine accelerates query processing for large datasets. Snowflake's query optimizer dynamically adapts to workload demands, optimizing query performance in real-time.

6. **Integration Ecosystem**: Amazon Redshift integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, Google BigQuery is designed to work with the Google Cloud Platform ecosystem, and Snowflake supports interoperability with various cloud providers. Redshift's tight integration with AWS services simplifies data pipeline management within the AWS environment, while BigQuery's compatibility with GCP tools enhances data analytics workflows. Snowflake's multi-cloud support allows organizations to leverage different cloud providers for specific use cases, facilitating a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Snowflake in terms of architecture, pricing, concurrency, data loading, query performance, and integration ecosystem can help organizations make informed decisions when selecting a cloud data warehouse solution.

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Advice on Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake

datocrats-org
datocrats-org

Jul 29, 2020

Needs adviceonAmazon EC2Amazon EC2TableauTableauPowerBIPowerBI

We need to perform ETL from several databases into a data warehouse or data lake. We want to

  • keep raw and transformed data available to users to draft their own queries efficiently
  • give users the ability to give custom permissions and SSO
  • move between open-source on-premises development and cloud-based production environments

We want to use inexpensive Amazon EC2 instances only on medium-sized data set 16GB to 32GB feeding into Tableau Server or PowerBI for reporting and data analysis purposes.

319k views319k
Comments
Julien
Julien

CTO at Hawk

Sep 19, 2020

Decided

Cloud Data-warehouse is the centerpiece of modern Data platform. The choice of the most suitable solution is therefore fundamental.

Our benchmark was conducted over BigQuery and Snowflake. These solutions seem to match our goals but they have very different approaches.

BigQuery is notably the only 100% serverless cloud data-warehouse, which requires absolutely NO maintenance: no re-clustering, no compression, no index optimization, no storage management, no performance management. Snowflake requires to set up (paid) reclustering processes, to manage the performance allocated to each profile, etc. We can also mention Redshift, which we have eliminated because this technology requires even more ops operation.

BigQuery can therefore be set up with almost zero cost of human resources. Its on-demand pricing is particularly adapted to small workloads. 0 cost when the solution is not used, only pay for the query you're running. But quickly the use of slots (with monthly or per-minute commitment) will drastically reduce the cost of use. We've reduced by 10 the cost of our nightly batches by using flex slots.

Finally, a major advantage of BigQuery is its almost perfect integration with Google Cloud Platform services: Cloud functions, Dataflow, Data Studio, etc.

BigQuery is still evolving very quickly. The next milestone, BigQuery Omni, will allow to run queries over data stored in an external Cloud platform (Amazon S3 for example). It will be a major breakthrough in the history of cloud data-warehouses. Omni will compensate a weakness of BigQuery: transferring data in near real time from S3 to BQ is not easy today. It was even simpler to implement via Snowflake's Snowpipe solution.

We also plan to use the Machine Learning features built into BigQuery to accelerate our deployment of Data-Science-based projects. An opportunity only offered by the BigQuery solution

193k views193k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon Redshift
Amazon Redshift
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Snowflake
Snowflake

It is optimized for data sets ranging from a few hundred gigabytes to a petabyte or more and costs less than $1,000 per terabyte per year, a tenth the cost of most traditional data warehousing solutions.

Run super-fast, SQL-like queries against terabytes of data in seconds, using the processing power of Google's infrastructure. Load data with ease. Bulk load your data using Google Cloud Storage or stream it in. Easy access. Access BigQuery by using a browser tool, a command-line tool, or by making calls to the BigQuery REST API with client libraries such as Java, PHP or Python.

Snowflake eliminates the administration and management demands of traditional data warehouses and big data platforms. Snowflake is a true data warehouse as a service running on Amazon Web Services (AWS)—no infrastructure to manage and no knobs to turn.

Optimized for Data Warehousing- It uses columnar storage, data compression, and zone maps to reduce the amount of IO needed to perform queries. Redshift has a massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture, parallelizing and distributing SQL operations to take advantage of all available resources.;Scalable- With a few clicks of the AWS Management Console or a simple API call, you can easily scale the number of nodes in your data warehouse up or down as your performance or capacity needs change.;No Up-Front Costs- You pay only for the resources you provision. You can choose On-Demand pricing with no up-front costs or long-term commitments, or obtain significantly discounted rates with Reserved Instance pricing.;Fault Tolerant- Amazon Redshift has multiple features that enhance the reliability of your data warehouse cluster. All data written to a node in your cluster is automatically replicated to other nodes within the cluster and all data is continuously backed up to Amazon S3.;SQL - Amazon Redshift is a SQL data warehouse and uses industry standard ODBC and JDBC connections and Postgres drivers.;Isolation - Amazon Redshift enables you to configure firewall rules to control network access to your data warehouse cluster.;Encryption – With just a couple of parameter settings, you can set up Amazon Redshift to use SSL to secure data in transit and hardware-acccelerated AES-256 encryption for data at rest.<br>
All behind the scenes- Your queries can execute asynchronously in the background, and can be polled for status.;Import data with ease- Bulk load your data using Google Cloud Storage or stream it in bursts of up to 1,000 rows per second.;Affordable big data- The first Terabyte of data processed each month is free.;The right interface- Separate interfaces for administration and developers will make sure that you have access to the tools you need.
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Statistics
Stacks
1.5K
Stacks
1.8K
Stacks
1.2K
Followers
1.4K
Followers
1.5K
Followers
1.2K
Votes
108
Votes
152
Votes
27
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 41
    Data Warehousing
  • 27
    Scalable
  • 17
    SQL
  • 14
    Backed by Amazon
  • 5
    Encryption
Pros
  • 28
    High Performance
  • 25
    Easy to use
  • 22
    Fully managed service
  • 19
    Cheap Pricing
  • 16
    Process hundreds of GB in seconds
Cons
  • 1
    You can't unit test changes in BQ data
  • 0
    Sdas
Pros
  • 7
    Public and Private Data Sharing
  • 4
    Multicloud
  • 4
    User Friendly
  • 4
    Good Performance
  • 3
    Great Documentation
Integrations
SQLite
SQLite
MySQL
MySQL
Oracle PL/SQL
Oracle PL/SQL
Xplenty
Xplenty
Fluentd
Fluentd
Looker
Looker
Chartio
Chartio
Treasure Data
Treasure Data
Python
Python
Apache Spark
Apache Spark
Node.js
Node.js
Looker
Looker
Periscope
Periscope
Mode
Mode

What are some alternatives to Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Snowflake?

Qubole

Qubole

Qubole is a cloud based service that makes big data easy for analysts and data engineers.

Amazon EMR

Amazon EMR

It is used in a variety of applications, including log analysis, data warehousing, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics.

Altiscale

Altiscale

we run Apache Hadoop for you. We not only deploy Hadoop, we monitor, manage, fix, and update it for you. Then we take it a step further: We monitor your jobs, notify you when something’s wrong with them, and can help with tuning.

Stitch

Stitch

Stitch is a simple, powerful ETL service built for software developers. Stitch evolved out of RJMetrics, a widely used business intelligence platform. When RJMetrics was acquired by Magento in 2016, Stitch was launched as its own company.

Azure Synapse

Azure Synapse

It is an analytics service that brings together enterprise data warehousing and Big Data analytics. It gives you the freedom to query data on your terms, using either serverless on-demand or provisioned resources—at scale. It brings these two worlds together with a unified experience to ingest, prepare, manage, and serve data for immediate BI and machine learning needs.

Dremio

Dremio

Dremio—the data lake engine, operationalizes your data lake storage and speeds your analytics processes with a high-performance and high-efficiency query engine while also democratizing data access for data scientists and analysts.

Cloudera Enterprise

Cloudera Enterprise

Cloudera Enterprise includes CDH, the world’s most popular open source Hadoop-based platform, as well as advanced system management and data management tools plus dedicated support and community advocacy from our world-class team of Hadoop developers and experts.

Airbyte

Airbyte

It is an open-source data integration platform that syncs data from applications, APIs & databases to data warehouses lakes & DBs.

Treasure Data

Treasure Data

Treasure Data's Big Data as-a-Service cloud platform enables data-driven businesses to focus their precious development resources on their applications, not on mundane, time-consuming integration and operational tasks. The Treasure Data Cloud Data Warehouse service offers an affordable, quick-to-implement and easy-to-use big data option that does not require specialized IT resources, making big data analytics available to the mass market.

Xplenty

Xplenty

Read and process data from cloud storage sources such as Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files and IBM SoftLayer Object Storage. Once done processing, Xplenty allows you to connect with Amazon Redshift, SAP HANA and Google BigQuery. You can also store processed data back in your favorite relational database, cloud storage or key-value store.

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