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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Cloud Services Layer
   This layer contains all the operations that coordinate throughout Snowflake, like authorization, encryption, metadata for loaded data, and query processing.