Snowflake Storage for Iceberg: Weighing Your Own S3 Against Snowflake-Managed Files
Snowflake made backups for its Apache Iceberg tables generally available on November 4, 2026. The article, written by an AWS Community Builder, argues that the real choice is not whether to use Iceberg but whether files must remain inside the team's own AWS account. Snowflake Storage lets users create managed Iceberg tables by specifying SNOWFLAKE_MANAGED, removing the need for S3 buckets or IAM roles, while the files stay in Iceberg format. The comparison covers Fail-safe protection, transient table support, billing, compaction, and orphan file cleanup, which Snowflake takes over from the user. The author also highlights that the choice affects access auditing with CloudTrail, KMS key control, and the ability to read files directly from AWS services like Athena, EMR, and Glue.
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