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Snowflake

Astran AlwaysReady® integrates with Snowflake to ensure your critical business processes remain executable even when your primary systems (ERP, SAP, operational platforms) become temporarily unreachable.

The principle is straightforward: export the data your processes depend on from Snowflake into Astran's secure storage on a regular basis. During a cybercrisis, your teams can access and operate on a secured, always-available copy of that data.

How it works​

Snowflake exposes an external stage mechanism that lets you push data directly into any S3-compatible storage, including Astran S3. The integration requires two SQL steps.

Step 1: Create an external stage​

Create a named stage in Snowflake pointing to your Astran S3 bucket:

CREATE OR REPLACE STAGE my_astran_stage
  URL = 's3://my-bucket/'
  ENDPOINT = '<partition>.s3.astran.io'
  CREDENTIALS = (
    AWS_KEY_ID = '<your_access_key_id>'
    AWS_SECRET_KEY = '<your_secret_access_key>'
  )
  FILE_FORMAT = (TYPE = CSV FIELD_OPTIONALLY_ENCLOSED_BY = '"');

Replace <partition> with your Astran partition name (e.g. company-prod) and the credentials with an Astran API key that has s3:PutObject permission on the target bucket.

info

Store your Astran API credentials in Snowflake Secrets Manager rather than hardcoding them in stage or task definitions.

Step 2: Export data​

Use COPY INTO to push a table or query result into the stage:

-- Export a full table
COPY INTO @my_astran_stage/exports/accounts.csv
  FROM my_schema.accounts
  FILE_FORMAT = (TYPE = CSV FIELD_OPTIONALLY_ENCLOSED_BY = '"')
  OVERWRITE = TRUE
  SINGLE = TRUE;

-- Export the result of a query
COPY INTO @my_astran_stage/exports/active_suppliers.csv
  FROM (SELECT * FROM my_schema.suppliers WHERE status = 'ACTIVE')
  FILE_FORMAT = (TYPE = CSV FIELD_OPTIONALLY_ENCLOSED_BY = '"')
  OVERWRITE = TRUE
  SINGLE = TRUE;
tip

Test with Snowflake Sample Data before exporting production datasets.

Automating exports with Snowflake Tasks​

To keep your Astran data copies fresh, schedule nightly exports using a Snowflake Task:

CREATE OR REPLACE TASK nightly_astran_export
  WAREHOUSE = my_warehouse
  SCHEDULE = 'USING CRON 0 2 * * * UTC'
AS
  COPY INTO @my_astran_stage/exports/accounts.csv
    FROM my_schema.accounts
    FILE_FORMAT = (TYPE = CSV FIELD_OPTIONALLY_ENCLOSED_BY = '"')
    OVERWRITE = TRUE
    SINGLE = TRUE;

ALTER TASK nightly_astran_export RESUME;

With nightly scheduling, Astran maintains data copies that are at most 24 hours old, which is sufficient for most crisis scenarios.