Here’s a quick overview of the 3 layers of the Snowflake architecture.
Snowflake Architecture – A Hybrid Model
A snowflake implementation is composed of three distinct layers:
- Storage Layer
Snowflake divides the information into many internally optimized and compressed micro partitions. It stores data in a columnar fashion. Data is saved in the cloud and is managed using a shared-disk architecture. - Compute Layer
Snowflake executes queries using a “Virtual Warehouse”. Snowflake maintains a layer of separation between the query processing layer and the disc storage layer. This layer executes queries against the data in the storage layer. - Cloud Services Layer
This layer contains all the operations that coordinate throughout Snowflake, like authorization, encryption, metadata for loaded data, and query processing.
