Stacking up versus Azure Synapse / Microsoft Fabric

Yellowbrick Data Warehouse: Modern, Scalable and Cost-Effective

Azure Synapse is a collection of related but independent data technologies such as Dedicated SQL Pools (SQL Data Warehouse), SQL Serverless (Fabric Warehouse), Synapse Spark (Fabric Data Engineering), Data Explorer (Fabric Real-Time Analytics), and Data Factory. Yellowbrick competes primarily with Synapse SQL Dedicated Pools and SQL Serverless components, and to a lesser extent with Data Explorer.

Both Yellowbrick and Synapse SQL capabilities use MPP techniques to distribute SQL query workloads across multiple nodes to execute queries against large volumes of data, but the similarities end there.

The elephant in the room is that after many years of underinvestment, Azure Synapse has finally been discontinued by Microsoft in favor of Microsoft Fabric. Microsoft Fabric Warehouse is a brand-new service requiring migration and a rethink of security and operating procedures.

Azure Synapse does not deliver the modern elastic multi-cluster experience that customers need and expect. Unlike Yellowbrick, SQL Pools are limited to a single database with no cross-database queries. Despite many years of promising multi-cluster support, SQL Pools only support a single dedicated compute Pool/Cluster. The result – Synapse customers require costly over-provisioning.

Yellowbrick supports multiple independent compute clusters – for example for different teams – facilitating cross-charge and right-sizing.

SQL Pools use opaque DWU units, with increments in factors of 60. Yellowbrick allows each cluster to grow in single node increments and distributes data properly between active nodes.

Yellowbrick is also completely transparent about CPU, memory, and cache utilization.

Takeaway

Get Modern

After many years of underinvestment, Azure Synapse has finally been discontinued by Microsoft in favor of Microsoft Fabric. Microsoft Fabric Warehouse is a brand-new service requiring migration and a rethink of security and operating procedures.

Takeaway

Get Real

Azure Synapse / Microsoft Fabric

Compute for Synapse is combined into DWU (or capacities) and requires Synapse-specific
pre-purchase agreements, whereas Yellowbrick uses standard Azure Compute allowing the use of more flexible Azure Reserved Instances. The result – better utilization of enterprise discounts and no opaque markup of compute, network, or storage.

Fabric shifts customers to a new Lakehouse model based around Synapse SQL Serverless. The performance and cost unpredictability of SQL Serverless make it useful only for occasional ad hoc queries over the data lake where performance is not a concern.

Yellowbrick runs completely in your VNET (or VPC) simplifying security and firewall configuration and can be set up without any public IP endpoints. Synapse requires complex managed endpoints and routing to deliver a secure implementation. Parts of the Synapse service are multi-tenant and run in Microsoft Managed, requiring complex security audits and lengthy approval processes from your security organization.

Managing security for Synapse requires complex coordination of Azure RBAC, Synapse RBAC, Storage RBAC, and in-database object security. With Yellowbrick all security is managed through standard SQL roles and privileges – both simplifying operations and governance. Yellowbrick supports AAD authentication and OAuth as well as database authentication.

If you have been using Azure Synapse or are looking to upgrade your SQL Server-based data warehouse, Yellowbrick provides a more capable, more modern, more scalable, and more cost-effective database platform in either cloud or on-premises. Yellowbrick also offers the flexibility to enable BI users to run tens of concurrent simpler queries with fewer resources assigned to maximize the interactive query performance, e.g., in Tableau or Power BI.

Stacking up versus Azure Synapse / Microsoft Fabric

Yellowbrick Data Warehouse: Modern, Scalable and Cost-Effective

Takeaway

Get Modern

Takeaway

Get Real

Azure Synapse / Microsoft Fabric

Yellowbrick

Synapse

Support for OAuth and AAD

Highly compressed columnstore storage format

Full separation of storage and compute

Hybrid row / columnstore

No secondary indexes and materialized views for performance

Scale one node at a time

Multi-cluster support

Load-balanced scale-out cluster support

Designed for high concurrency

Full transparency of storage and compute resources

Runs on modern cloud-native Kubernetes architecture

Long-term backup retention

Basic resource governance: CPU / memory

Advanced workload management using compile time or run-time metrics

Support for Kafka ingest without Stream Analytics

Queries compiled to machine code

Avoids inefficient in-memory buffer pool

Ingest data from data lake in CSV and Parquet

Serverless query over file

Top Rated in Customer Reviews

Search Our Data

Book a Demo

Learn More About the Only Modern Data Warehouse for Hybrid Cloud