Category: Snowflake

Benchmarking , Snowflake, Databricks , Synapse , BigQuery, Redshift , Trino , DuckDB and Hyper using TPCH-SF100

(Disclaimer : I use BigQuery for a personal project and it is virtually free for smaller workload, at work we use SQL Server as a Data Store, I will try my best to be objective )

TL:DR ;

Run TPCH-SF100 benchmark (base table 600 million rows) to understand how different Engine Behave in this workload using just the lowest tier offering, you can download the results here

Introduction

Was playing with Snowflake free trial ( maybe for the fifth time) and for no apparent reason, I just run Queries on TPCH-S100 Dataset, usually I am interested in smaller dataset, but I thought how Snowflake may behave with bigger data using the smallest cluster, long story short, I got 102 second, posted it in Linkedin and a common reaction was Snowflake is somehow cheating.

Obviously I did not buy the cheating explanation , as it is too risky and Databricks will make it international news.

Load the Data Again

Ideally I would have generated the Data myself and load it into Snowflake, generating 600 Million records in my laptop is not trivial, my tool of choice, DuckDB has an utility for that but it is currently single threaded, instead

  • I exported the data from Snowflake to Azure Storage as parquet files
  • Download it to my Laptop, generate new files using DuckDB as in Snowflake you can’t control the minimum size of files, you can control the max but not the Min

Snowflake Parquet External Table

My Plan was to run Queries directly on Parquet hosted on azure storage, the experience was not great at all, Snowflake got Query 5 join order wrong

Snowflake Internal Table

I loaded the parquet files generated by duckdb, Snowflake getting extremely good results. what I learnt, whatever Snowflake magic is doing, it is related to their proprietary file format.

BigQuery External Table

I have no frame of reference for this kind of workload, so I loaded the the data to BigQuery using external table in Google Cloud, Google got 5 minutes, one Run, 2.5 $ !!!!

BigQuery Internal Table

Loaded Data to BigQuery internal format, notice, BigQuery don’t charge for this operation , 2 Minutes 16 second, 1 Cold Run.

BigQuery Standard Edition

BigQuery added new pricing model where you pay by second, after the first minutes, I used the Standard Edition with a small size, I run the same query two time, unfortunately the new distributed disk cache don’t seems to be working, same result 5 minutes, that’s was disappointing

Redshift Serverless

Imported the same Parquet files into Redshift serverless, The schema was defined without Distribution keys, The results are for 3 Runs, the first run was a bit slower as it is fetching the data from the managed storage to the compute SSD the other 2 runs are substantially faster, I thought it is fair to have an average, Using the lowest Tier 8 RPU (2.88 $/Hour)

Redshift Serverless hot run was maybe the fastest performance I have seen so far, but they need still to improve on their cold Run.

I was surprised by the system overall performance, from my reading, it seems AWS basically rewrite the whole thing including separating compute from storage, Overall I think it is a good DWH.

Trino

Trino did not run Query 15, had to run a modified syntax but same results, 1 Run from Cold Storage, I am using the excellent service from Starburst Data

Synapse Serverless

Honestly, I was quite surprised by the performance of synapse serverless, initially I tested with the smaller file size generated by Snowflake and it did work, the first run failed but the second works just fine, I did like it, it did failed quickly, notice that Synapse run statistics on parquet files, so you would expect a more stable performance, not the fastest, but rather resilient.

Anyway , it took from 8-11 minutes, to be clear that’s not Synapse from two years ago.

Not related to the benchmark but I did enjoyed the lake database experience

Databricks External Table

I had not a great experience with Databricks, I could not simply pass authentication to Databricks SQL, you need a service principal and registering an App, and the documentation keep talking about Unity, which is not installed by default, This is a new install why Unity is not embedded if it is such a big deal ?

Anyway, First I created an external Table in databricks using the excellent passthrough technique in the Single Node Cluster, Databricks got 12 minutes,

Databricks Delta table

let’s try again with Delta, I created a new managed table, run optimize and analyse , (I always thought delta has already the stats), but it didn’t seems to make a big difference, still around 11 minutes, and this running from the disk, so no network bottleneck

DuckDB

My Plan was to run DuckDB on Azure ML, but I need a bigger VM than the one provided by default, I could not find a way to increase my Quota , I know it sounds silly, and I am just relating my experience, turn out Azure ML VM Quota is different from Azure VM, it did drive me crazy why I could get any VM in Databricks but Azure ML keep complaining I don’t have enough CPU.

Unfortunately I hit two bugs, first the native DuckDB file format seems to generate double the size of Parquet, the dev was very quick to identify the issue, the workaround is to define the table schema and then load the data using insert, the file became 24 GB compared to the original 40GB parquet files.

I End Up going with parquet files, I was not really excited by loading a 24 GB file in a storage account.

I run the Queries in Azure Databricks VM E8ds_v4 (8 cores and 64 GM of RAM)

As I am using fsspec with disk cache, the remote storage is used only the first run, after 4 tries, Query 21 keep crashing the VM 😦

Tableau Hyper

Tableau hyper was one of the biggest surprise, unfortunately, I hit a bug with Query 18, otherwise, it would have being the cheapest option.

Some Observations

  • Initially I was worried I made a mistake in Snowflake results, the numbers are just impressive for a single node tier, one explanation is the Execution Engine is mostly operating on compressed data with little materialization , but whatever they are doing, it has to do with the internal table format, which bring a whole discussion of performance vs openness, personally in a BI scenarios, I want the best performance possible, and wonder if they can get the same speed using Apache Iceberg.
  • Synapse Serverless improved a lot from last year, it did work well regardless of the data size of individual parquet files that I throw at it, and in my short testing it was faster than databricks and you pay by data scanned, so strictly speaking pure speed is not such a big deal but without a free result cache like BigQuery, it is still a hard sell.
  • Azure ML Quota policy was very confusing to me, and honestly I don’t want to deal with support ticket.
  • Databricks; may well be the fastest to run 100 TB, but for 100 GB workload, color me unimpressed.
  • DuckDB is impressive for an open source project that did not even reach version 1. I am sure those issues will be fixed soon.
  • Everything I heard about Redshift from twitter was wrong, it is a very good DWH, with Excellent performance.
  • BigQuery as I expected has excellent performance both for parquet and the native table format, The challenge is to keep the same using the new auto scale offering. added Auto scale performance, I think Google should do better.

Summary Results

You can find the results here, if you are a vendor and you don’t like the results feel free to host a TPCH-SF100 dataset in your service and let people test it themselves.

Note : Using SQL Query History : Bigquery one Cold Run , Synapse Serverless , Redshift Serverless and Snowflake a mix of cold and warm

(Note : Synapse Serverless always read from remote storage)

Databricks I am showing the best run from Disk, there is no system table, so I had to copy paste the results from the console.

Pricing

I did not kept the durations for Data load, it is just the cost for Read, obviously it is a theoretical exercise, and does not reflect real life usage which depends on other factors like concurrency performance , how you can share a pool of resources to multiple departement,free results cache, the performance of your ODBC drivers etc.

it is extremely important to understand what’s included in the basic price, for example.

Results cache:

BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift results cache are free and you don’t need a running cluster, in Databricks you pay for it, Synapse don’t offer result cache at all.

Data loading :

BigQuery data loading is a free operation and other service like sorting and partitioning, in other DB you needs to pay.

Egress Fees :

Snowflake/BigQuery offer free egress fees, Other vendors you may pay, you need to check

Note :

BigQuery : for This workload make more sense to pay by compute not data scanned, either using auto scale, reserved pricing etc, I will try to test Auto scaling later.

Snowflake : I used the standard edition of Snowflake

Final Thoughts

Cloud DWH are amazing tech and only competition can drive innovation, not FUD and dishonesty, regardless of what platform you use, keep an eye on what other vendors are doing, and test using your own workload, you may be surprised by what you find.

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Benchmark Snowflake, BigQuery, SingleStore , Databricks, Datamart and DuckDB using TPC-H-SF10

Edit 18 May 2022: Microsoft released Datamart which has excellent performance for this type of Workload.

Another blog on my favorite topic, interactive Live BI Workload with low latency and high concurrency, but this time, hopefully with numbers to compare.

I tested only the Databases that I am familiar with, BigQuery, Snowflake, Databricks , SingleStore , PowerBI Datamart and DuckDB

TPC-H

The most widely used Benchmark to test BI workload is TPC-DS and TPC-H produced by the independent Organization TPC, unfortunately most of the available benchmark are for big dataset starting from 1 TB, as I said before I more interested in smaller Workload for a simple reason, after nearly 5 years of doing Business intelligence for different companies, most of the data model are really small, ( my biggest was 70 Million rows with 4 small dimension tables).

Benchmarking is a very complex process, and I am not claiming that my results are correct, all I wanted to know as a user is an order of magnitude and a benchmark can give you a high level impression of a database performance.

Schema

I Like TPC-H as it has a simpler schema 8 tables and only 22 Queries compared to TPC-DS which require 99 Queries.

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Some Considerations

  • Result Cache is not counted.
  • The results are using warm cache and at least one cold run, I run the 22 Queries multiple times.
  • Databricks by default provide a sample Database TPC-SF05, the main Table Lineitem is 30 Millions rows, I don’t know enough to import the data and apply the proper sorting etc , so I preferred to use the smaller dataset. I did create a local copy by using create table as select ( Loaded SF10 Data)
  • Snowflake and SingleStore have SF10 and other scale by default.
  • BigQuery, I imported the data from Snowflake , I sorted the tables for better performance, it is a bit odd that BigQuery don’t provide such an important public dataset by default
  • Microsoft Datamart no sorting or partitioned was applied , the data was imported from Biguery.

No Results Cache

Most DWH support results cache, basically if you run the same Query and the base tables did not change the Engine will return the same results very quickly, obviously in any benchmark, you need to filter out those queries.

  • In Snowflake you can use this statement to turn the results cache off 
ALTER SESSION SET USE_CACHED_RESULT = FALSE;
  • In Databrick
SET use_cached_result = false
  • BigQuery, just add an option in the UI
  • SingleStore and Datamart, does not have a result cache per se, the engine just keep a copy of the Query Plan, but it scan The Data every time.

Warm Cache

Snowflake, SingleStore and Databricks leverage the local SSD cache, when you run a Query the first time, it scan the data from the cloud storage which is a slow operation, then when you run it again the Query will try to use the data already copied in the local disk which is substantially faster, specially with Snowflake if you want to keep the local warm cache it make sense to keep your Cluster running a bit longer.

BigQuery is a different beast there is no VM, the data is read straight from the Google Cloud Storage, yes google Cloud Network is famous for being very fast, but I guess it can not compete with a local SSD Disk, anyway that’s why we have BI Engine which basically cache the data in RAM, but not all Queries are supported, actually only 6 are fully accelerated as of this writing. ( see Limitations )

Query History

Getting Query results is very straightforward using information_Schema, except for databricks, it seems it is only supported using an API, I just copied one warm run and paste it to excel and load it from there.

Engine Used

  • Snowflake : X-Small (Lowest tier)
  • Databricks : 2X-Small (Lowest tier)
  • Single Store : S-0
  • BigQuery : on Demand + 1 GB Reservation of BI Engine
  • Datamart : included with PowerBI Premium, official spec not disclosed.
  • DuckDB : my laptop, 16GB RAM 🙂

Results

The 22 Queries are saved in this repo, I am using PowerBI to combine all the results

let’s start with

Snowflake VS BigQuery

Snowflake Vs SingleStore

Snowflakes VS Databricks

Notice Databricks is using the smaller Dataset SF05, 30 million rows and still Snowflake show better performance

Overall

Edit : due to feedback, I am adding the sum of all Queries, You can download the results here

Edit : 26-Jan-2022, I Updated the results for Databricks SF10, I Uploaded the same data used for BigQuery, then created Delta Table and applied optimize Z Order

Take away

  • Snowflake is very fast and has consistent results for all the 22 Queries, Except Query 13 is a bit odd

  • SingleStore is remarkable but Query 13 is not good at all and skew the overall performance.

  • BigQuery is fantastic when BI Engine works ( only 11 Queries are supported from the total of 22)

  • Databricks performance in TPC-H-SF05 is problematic, I just hope they release a proper TPC-H-SF10 dataset and information schema like other DWH

  • Datamart has the best user experience, the only Data Platform where you can load the data without writing any Code,The same as Singlestore; Query 13 has a very Big Cost on the overall performance.

  • DuckDB : Query 9 skew the overall performance and probably I need a new laptop 🙂

First Impression of Snowflake from a BigQuery user perspective.

TL;DR : Random observations after using Snowflake for a couple of hours, there is a lot to likes but mixed feeling about the cost.

For no obvious reason, I felt an urge to try Snowflake, The setup was trivial, you get 30 days trial with $400, no Credit card required.

Snowflake is multi cloud product, first I had to choose the cloud provider and the region, My Personal PowerBI instance is in Melbourne, unfortunately as of this writing it is Only Available in Azure Sydney Region, it make sense to choose the same region for two reasons

  • Latency, inter region Transfer take more time
  • Egress Cost, Cloud Provider charge for Inter Region Transfer

For the record my personal data is in GCP Tokyo , but Snowflake is not available there.

User interface

The User interface is very neat and simplistic ( Good thing), I did not need to check any documentation

Snowflake provide free sample data by default

and Obviously, you can browser all kind of data from the Marketplace , it is very well integrated and seems trivial to use, as you have noticed already, Snowflake like BigQuery has a total separation between Storage and Compute, so far so good.

Preview Data

I click on Data Preview, and I got this message

Yes Unlike BigQuery, Data Preview is a paid operation and require a Cluster running.

Create a new Cluster

This is the core feature of Snowflake, creating a new cluster is trivial, as a test, I create the smallest possible Cluster.

The Cluster was up and running in a couple of seconds, very Impressive, and the way it works is very simple.

if there is no Query Running, it will shut down after 1 minute ( or whatever you choose), When a new Query showed up for example from a BI tool, the Engine very quickly wake up !!!!

The Minimum Cluster, I could setup was X-Small and it cost 1 credit/Hour ( 2,75 $/Hour), but you pay per second with a 1 minute minimum , I am using Standard Edition, Enterprise edition cost more.

Note : As a BigQuery enthusiast, I hope Google release the auto flex slot

Notice here, Snowflake is not simply a cluster to Run some Queries, but it does have a Service Layer which do a lot of operations behind the scene, personally I am mainly interested in free Results cache, which is freaking fast , as low as a 50 ms !!!!

Query History Log

A nice Query history log, I really liked the Client Driver, you can easily tell, if the Queries are coming from an external BI tools or Query from the Console, one very very annoying thing, if you change that view and you came back, you lose the selection and you have to select the columns again, I wish Snowflake could save the customization of the columns.

Query Console

it was not very obvious, but to select columns name, you need first to click on a table which open a panel then Click on those three little dot, (it is obvious once you know it) , there is no multi tab support, new Query open a new Window, but honestly seeing the new BigQuery UI, maybe it is not a bad idea after all 🙂

Performance

My initial plan was to use a copy a SQL Script from BigQuery that uses Loops, but turn out Snowflake don’t support DO while ( it is coming for SQL ), there is a workaround using javascript which I may use later, but instead, and just to have a first impression, I used a PowerBI report in DirectQuery mode and see how it goes.

Image

Snowflake Driver for PowerBI is amazing, I never saw a sub second Direct Query in PowerBI before, even when returning 1 row from cache, ( BigQuery Driver for PowerBI is not optimized, I don’t really knows who to blame, Google or Microsoft or probably both, turn out it is Google responsability)

I am using TPCH_SF10 dataset, the main fact Table contains 60 Million records

And here is the Snowflake data Model ( pun intended) in PowerBI using DirectQuery.

Some results a really intriguing, The ones that don’t have Bytes scanned are cached, but look at this Query that scanned 2.1 GB and returned in 770ms, that’s a BigQuery BI Engine territory right there !!!

The Reason, the Query is in the subsecond, is again because of another type of cache, Snwoflake cache the raw data in the local SSD drive of the cluster, hence it make sense for better performance to keep the Cluster running for a bit longer, if you suspend a Cluster, there is no guarantee that Snowflake will resume the same one.

Btw, the Query plan visual is very detailed and explain every step, very nice.

Takeaway

The Quick Auto suspend and resume of Clusters, Global Query result cache and the fact it is a Multi Cloud offering are the key strength of Snowflake.

I was really surprised by the experience of using Snowflake Direct Query with PowerBI, and the data marketplace was a very polished experience.

I will show my bias here , for 2.75 $/Hour I can reserved a BigQuery BI Engine instance with 50 GB in-memory RAM, it will be interesting to compare the performance and concurrency of Both Engine.

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