Adopting Apache Iceberg? How Dremio can enhance your Iceberg Journey

The rise of data lakehouses is transforming the way organizations manage, analyze, and leverage their data. Lakehouse architecture offers a flexible, scalable solution that bridges the gap between traditional data warehouses and data lakes. Apache Iceberg, an open table format designed to deliver reliable, high-performance analytics on large datasets, is at the heart of this architecture. Iceberg’s architecture provides the robustness and scalability needed for modern analytics, making it an essential component in the evolution of data platforms.

However, the journey to adopting Apache Iceberg as the foundation of a lakehouse is not without its challenges. Transitioning to a new data framework often requires overcoming barriers related to legacy systems, cost optimization, and operational complexities. This is where Dremio comes in. Built to complement the lakehouse model, Dremio provides the tools and capabilities that ease the adoption and operation of Apache Iceberg, making the journey into the lakehouse architecture smoother and more efficient.

Let's explore three compelling reasons why Dremio should be an essential part of any Iceberg lakehouse strategy.

Reason 1: Simplifies Migration with Data Virtualization and a Unified Semantic Layer

Transitioning to Apache Iceberg isn’t an overnight process. Most organizations have data distributed across a variety of systems—data warehouses, traditional databases, and even legacy data lakes. As you adopt Iceberg, this data doesn’t immediately transfer to Iceberg tables, and it’s common to operate in a hybrid environment for an extended period. In this context, Dremio’s data virtualization capabilities make incremental adoption of Iceberg not only feasible but also seamless.

Data Virtualization for Hybrid Access

With Dremio’s data virtualization, you don’t need to overhaul your data infrastructure to start benefiting from Iceberg. Dremio allows you to query your Iceberg tables in your preferred lakehouse catalog while federating queries alongside the legacy system. This means teams can simultaneously work with Iceberg tables and other data sources, without complex data movement or migration efforts. Dremio provides a unified interface where Iceberg and non-Iceberg data are accessible, reducing friction and simplifying the user experience as your Iceberg adoption progresses.

Unified Semantic Layer and Documentation

Another core feature that sets Dremio apart is its built-in semantic layer and data documentation capabilities. As your Iceberg tables expand, consistency across business metrics becomes crucial. Dremio’s semantic layer allows teams to define and share business metrics, creating views that maintain data consistency and prevent discrepancies across departments. The built-in wiki functionality lets you document your data, making sure that team members can access information about data definitions, sources, and calculations.

Together, these features ensure that your teams don’t experience friction or inconsistency even as your Iceberg footprint grows. Dremio’s interface provides a single access point for all data, which is documented and organized for consistency, making it easier for teams to adopt Iceberg incrementally without disrupting ongoing workflows. This seamless integration empowers teams to work confidently with data from various sources, knowing they have reliable, consistent access to trusted information.

Reason 2: Optimized Performance and Cost-Effectiveness (TCO)

One of the main advantages of adopting Apache Iceberg is its potential to deliver robust performance and cost savings at scale. However, achieving this performance while keeping costs down can be challenging without the right platform. Dremio’s high-performance architecture is designed to maximize an Iceberg lakehouse's value by optimizing infrastructure needs and data movement, making it an essential tool for organizations seeking to optimize performance and minimize total cost of ownership (TCO).

High-Performance Architecture for Cost Efficiency

Dremio’s architecture enables significant performance gains, allowing organizations to get more from their infrastructure with less resource investment than other platforms. Whether running Dremio in the cloud or on-premises, the platform’s efficient design means you’ll need less infrastructure to achieve desired performance, directly lowering costs. Dremio minimizes the need for expensive, high-powered hardware while ensuring users experience fast, responsive data access. Dremio's data reflections feature maximizes performance at a minimal cost for your highest-priority workloads.

Data Virtualization and Caching to Minimize Data Movement

Dremio’s data virtualization capabilities reduce the need for costly data movement, which can often drive up storage and network fees in cloud environments. By keeping data in its original location and offering virtualized access, Dremio minimizes the need for duplicating data across systems, saving both time and money. Additionally, Dremio’s Columnar Cloud Cache (C3) and Results Cache features significantly enhance query speed by storing frequently accessed data in memory. These caches reduce repetitive data processing and storage access, which, in turn, minimizes cloud access costs and optimizes performance for recurring queries.

User-Friendly Interface for Smooth Data Access

Dremio provides a familiar, intuitive interface that makes Iceberg data accessible to end users. This user-friendly experience encourages widespread team adoption, reducing training costs and enabling faster insights. With Dremio, users gain a seamless bridge between their existing data and the new Iceberg environment, fostering adoption across departments without the steep learning curve often associated with new data architectures.

Together, these features help maximize the cost savings of an Apache Iceberg lakehouse, giving organizations the best of both worlds: cutting-edge performance and budget-conscious infrastructure. Dremio’s performance-focused design reduces infrastructure costs and helps users unlock the full potential of an Iceberg lakehouse, enhancing both the data experience and financial efficiency.

Reason 3: Simplifies Lakehouse Operations with an Integrated Lakehouse Catalog and Advanced DataOps

Operating an Apache Iceberg lakehouse can present unique challenges, especially around data management, optimization, and governance. Dremio’s approach to lakehouse operations streamlines these processes, offering an integrated lakehouse catalog and advanced DataOps capabilities that make managing Iceberg tables as straightforward as traditional data warehouses.

Support for Multiple Catalogs with an Integrated Solution

While Dremio seamlessly connects to popular lakehouse catalogs like Nessie, Polaris, Unity, and AWS Glue, it also provides its own robust, integrated catalog, bringing unique benefits for managing Iceberg tables. With Dremio’s catalog, you can organize cloud and on-premises tables within a single unified view, complete with access controls. This setup gives you flexibility and governance across different storage environments, enhancing security and simplifying data access.

Automated Optimization and Cleanup

One of the biggest operational hurdles in managing lakehouse tables is ensuring they’re optimized for performance and adequately maintained over time. Dremio’s integrated catalog automates many critical tasks, handling data optimization and cleanup behind the scenes. By abstracting these processes, Dremio allows data teams to focus on deriving value from their data rather than managing it. This automation ensures that your Iceberg tables are always query-ready, with minimal manual intervention, making lakehouses as easy to maintain as traditional data warehouse systems.

Advanced DataOps Features for Modern CI/CD Patterns

Dremio’s catalog also supports advanced DataOps functionalities, enabling cutting-edge CI/CD workflows that promote agility and efficient resource use. For example, Dremio’s git-for-data features enable zero-copy environments for development and allow you to create isolated, storage-efficient data environments without duplicating data, lowering storage costs. Additionally, Dremio lets you isolate ingestion workflows to manage data quality better, ensuring that only reliable, validated data reaches production environments.

These features make Dremio’s catalog a powerful tool for implementing best practices in DataOps. With capabilities like isolated environments and CI/CD patterns, data teams can achieve a high level of data governance and quality control without extensive manual effort.

Seamless Integration with dbt for Orchestrated Data Management

Dremio’s integration with dbt (data build tool) further simplifies lakehouse operations by enabling orchestrated, version-controlled SQL workflows across data sources, including Apache Iceberg. Through dbt, users can check SQL into Git and automate data transformations, ensuring consistency across the entire data pipeline. This orchestration empowers teams to confidently develop, test, and deploy SQL code, knowing it’s versioned and governed as part of a larger data management process.

With Dremio’s integrated catalog, automated optimization, and support for advanced DataOps, managing an Iceberg lakehouse becomes significantly easier. Dremio handles the operational complexities, giving you a reliable, high-performance data environment that can be managed like a traditional warehouse while providing the scalability and flexibility of a lakehouse architecture.

Conclusion

Finding the right platform to support and enhance Iceberg Lakehouse architecture is crucial. Dremio emerges as a must-have partner for any Iceberg journey, helping you overcome the common challenges of data migration, performance optimization, and operational complexity. By combining robust data virtualization, cost-effective infrastructure, and an integrated catalog with advanced DataOps capabilities, Dremio allows you to make the most of Iceberg’s potential while maintaining a streamlined, user-friendly data environment.

Schedule a Free Architectural Workshop with Dremio to help Architect your Iceberg Journey.

Take Dremio for a test run on your laptop with this Step-by-Step exercise