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To help Qlik customers manage costs more effectively, Qlik has developed the Qlik Snowflake Monitoring application, designed to provide invaluable insights about your Snowflake costs, usage, inventory, security, performance and contract utilization. This app utilizes Qlik's Associative Engine to connect directly to your Snowflake instance and reveal insights from Snowflake's detailed metadata, offering valuable information that traditional query-based tools and Snowflake's own reports are unable to provide.
Leveraging Qlik Application Automation, and Data Alerts, you can:
- Install* & update the app with a fully guided, click-through installer, using an out-of-the-box Qlik Application Automation template.
- Get alerted when new versions of the Snowflake Monitor are available using Data Alerts.
*Minor configuration is required on first run to create the required data connections.
Content:
- Part One: 'Qlik Snowflake Monitoring App Installer' templateoverview
- Features
- Note on manual install
- Part Two: Creating and setting up analytics data connections
- Snowflake connection
- Note on Snowflake authentication
- REST connection to repository
- Note on update compatibility
- Part Three: Set up a Data Alert to notify when a new version of the app is available
- Summary
Part One: 'Qlik Snowflake Monitoring App Installer' template overview
This automation template is a fully guided installer/updater for the Qlik Snowflake Monitor. Leverage this automation template to easily install and update this application. The application itself is community-supported; and it is provided through Qlik’s Open-Source Software GitHub and thus is subject to Qlik’s open-source guidelines & policies.
For more information, refer to the GitHub Repository.
Features
- Easy app installation and updates
- Create new spaces or use existing spaces
- Automatic setup of settings, roles, and permissions
- Always installs the newest version from Qlik's OSS GitHub
- Tags apps to easily track installations and versions
- Works with both user and capacity-based subscriptions
- Compatible with all Snowflake tenant levels
Note on manual install
If the monitoring app was installed manually (i.e. not through the application automation installer), then the app will not be detected as existing. The automation will install new copies side-by-side. Any subsequent executions of the automation will detect the newly installed monitoring application and check their versions. This is because the application is tagged with ‘QCS - QSM - {App Name}’ and ‘QCS – QSM - {Version}’ during the installation process through the automation. Manually installed applications will not have these tags and therefore will not be detected.
Part Two: Creating and setting up analytics data connections
The Qlik Snowflake Monitor requires two connections, one to your Snowflake instance to feed the data for your analytics, and one REST connection to the qlik-oss repository to run a version check on the monitor.
Snowflake connection
You will need to create a custom User, Role and Warehouse on your snowflake tenant. This is to ensure this user and role can see the monitoring details and can be monitored.
- Update the credentials in the SQL script from GitHub
- Run the SQL as ‘ACCOUNTADMIN’ from your Snowflake tenant to create a warehouse to retrieve the relevant data. Make sure you change the password and store this securely.
- Create a snowflake data connection in the Qlik analytics space into which the application was deployed, using the following details:
- Server: The full hostname for the Snowflake account, not prefixed with http:// or https://
- Port: Leave as default unless it needs changing.
- Database: SNOWFLAKE
- Schema: ACCOUNT_USAGE
- Warehouse: QLIK_MONITORING_WH
- Role: QLIK_MONITORING_ROLE
For Authentication, this setup is defaulted to username & password.
- Username: QLIK_MONITORING
- Password: As specified in your configuration above
Finally, you need to name the connection as follows:
- Connection Name: SNOWFLAKE_MONITORING_DATA
Note on Snowflake authentication
If you wish to use an alternative authentication method, please follow the documentation accordingly on both Snowflake & Qlik.
REST connection to repository
The REST connection is used to fetch version details from the GitHub repository. On reload it will look for the the latest released version in github and check this against the version you have installed. You can later use this in ‘Part Three’ to create an alert when updates to the application are available. To create a REST connection the following information is required:
- URL: https://github.com/qlik-oss/qlik-snowflake-monitor/raw/main/manifest.json
- METHOD: GET
- Allow “WITH CONNECTION”: Enabled
- Connection Name: REST Monitoring Versioning API
Once these two connections have been set up, you can reload the application. The application has been created to accommodate Snowflake tenants of all sizes. If you have a small tenant, you will find the initial run of the load script can take around 30 minutes, and for larger tenants this can be over an hour or two. Subsequent runs will utilize cached QVDs that update daily to reduce reload times each subsequent day.
Note on update compatibility
If a new release of the application is made, occasionally a full reload of data is required, but generally, if the data schema is unchanged the existing QVDs will be maintained. This is through the use of versions in the names of the QVDs used to store the data.
Part Three: Set up a Data Alert to notify when a new version of the app is available
The application has the following two variables:
- vLatestVersion: The latest version of the app released on Qlik’s OSS GitHub.
- vIsLatestVersion: A Boolean of whether the app’s current version is equal to the latest version of the app released on Qlik’s OSS GitHub (1 if true, 0 if false).
To create a new Data Alert for updates to the monitoring app, follow these steps:
- Right-click on a chart in the app, select Alerts and then Create new alert.
- Clear out the defaults and provide the alert with a name such as Qlik Snowflake Monitor Update Available.
- Select Add measure and select the fx icon to enter a custom expression. Enter the expression ’$(vLatestVersion)'. Ensure it is wrapped in single quotes, then provide the label for the expression Latest Version.
- Select Add measure and select the fx icon to enter a custom expression. Enter the expression $(vIsLatestVersion), then provide the label for the expression Is Latest Version.
- Confirm the Details & data tab resembles the following:
- Navigate to the next tab, Conditions.
- Set the Measure to Is Latest Version, the Operator to Equal to, and the Value to 0. This way, if the app is not the latest version (0), it will trigger the alert.
- Confirm that the Conditions tab resembles the following:
- Navigate to the Distribution tab and confirm that the alert is evaluated When data is refreshed.
Summary
The Qlik Snowflake Monitor can be easily installed by following these steps above. If you wish to find out more, check out this Ometis blog post and this Ometis Webinar to get a run through of the analytics this application can offer.
If you face any issues, please use the GitHub and raise an issue through the repository.
