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How to use Snowflake with IDrive® e2?

Snowflake has been verified for use with IDrive® e2. You can also visit the Snowflake Documentation on configuring IDrive® e2 hot cloud object storage for further reference.

Using Snowflake with IDrive® e2 you can:

  • Create an external Snowflake table to query an existing, partitioned, data set from IDrive® e2 Cloud Storage.
  • Copy data from Snowflake to IDrive® e2 and make it available to applications and tools compatible with S3 storage.
  • Migrate your data from Snowflake and take advantage of IDrive® e2's predictable pricing, particularly for storing infrequently accessed data.

This article explains how to perform the following tasks:

  1. 1. Create SQL Worksheet in Snowflake
  2. 2. Create an external stage
  3. 3. Create an external table
  4. 4. Copy data into a Snowflake table from IDrive® e2
  5. 5. Copy data from a Snowflake table to IDrive® e2
  6. 6. Use Snowflake to Query Existing Data in IDrive® e2

Prerequisites:

  1. An active IDrive® e2 account. Sign up here if you do not have one.
  2. A dataset supported by Snowflake uploaded to your IDrive® e2 bucket. See how to create a bucket and add objects to it.
  3. An active Snowflake account.
  4. An understanding of Data Lake / Data Warehouse terminology and basic usage of Snowflake.

Upload Data to your IDrive® e2 Bucket

To use Snowflake external tables with IDrive® e2, you must have a dataset you wish to read from IDrive® e2.

The following example dataset dataset_snowflake.csv resides in the snow bucket in the Virginia region. The path to the data will be //snow

Create SQL Worksheet

Login to your Snowflake account and click and select SQL Worksheet. You can write queries for data in IDrive® e2 and run them from this worksheet.

Create Snowflake Database

After creating the Worksheet, you need to create a Database to hold the information about the External Table and any related data. We will create a database e2_sample_database.

Copy and paste the following two commands in the Worksheet:

CREATE DATABASE e2_sample_database;
USE DATABASE e2_sample_database;

The first command will create the database. The second will select it to be used for further queries in the Worksheet. To run the commands, select the SQL and click on the top-right corner.

Create a Snowflake Stage Object

A stage object should be created on Snowflake to tell where your data is being held or staged. We will create a reference to IDrive® e2 bucket with the region and Access Keys credentials.

We will create a stage object s3_e2 in this example and we will use the endpoint URL for the Virginia region, and IDrive® e2 Access Key ID and Secret Key.

create or replace stage s3_e2
url = 's3compat://snow'
endpoint = 'k3d1.va21.idrivee2-1.com'
credentials = (AWS_KEY_ID = 'xxx' AWS_SECRET_KEY = 'xxx');

List the data in your IDrive® e2 Bucket

Once the stage object is created you can list the contents of the files inside your IDrive® e2 Bucket snow.

We will call the list query on the stage name.

LIST @s3_e2;

Create a Snowflake External Table

Once the contents of the IDrive® e2 Bucket are listed, we can create a Snowflake External Table to be used to query your data. You will need to update the stage name, and the file format type based upon your dataset, and name chosen for the stage.

CREATE OR REPLACE EXTERNAL TABLE e2_user_ref
WITH LOCATION = @s3_e2/
FILE_FORMAT = (TYPE = CSV  SKIP_HEADER = 1)
PATTERN='dataset_snowflake.csv';

Copy data into a Snowflake table from IDrive® e2

Once you have created a table, you can copy data from your IDrive® e2 storage onto a Snowflake table. 

copy into @s3_e2_sj/snow-test-sj/user-details
from user_details
file_format = csv
header = true;

Copy data from a Snowflake table to IDrive® e2

You can also copy data from a Snowflake table to your IDrive® e2 storage.

copy into user_details from @s3.e2
files = ('dataset_snowflake.csv')
on_error = continue;

Run a Query on your data

After creating the table, you can also run some queries against your data in order to validate it.

You have now learned how to create a Snowflake External Table referencing data residing on IDrive® e2.

Note: Data restoration is handled by your specific backup solution provider and is affected by multiple variables that are unique to your environment. For application-related enquiries/support, it is strongly recommended you seek guidance from the technical team of your backup solution provider.