Is it possible to run a local Snowflake instance using Docker?

Question

Would it be possible to run local instance of snowflake inside docker container? We need to add test cases for the sql scripts written it in snowsql. If it is not possible to run local instance of snowflake inside docker container then is there any alternative to perform tests against sql scripts?

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible. Snowflake itself does not offer local execution, but there has been strong demand from the community, so some third parties have started building local solutions.

LocalStack is the leading platform for local cloud development, and has so far mostly focused on emulating AWS cloud services [1]. (disclaimer: I'm the CTO of LocalStack)

Over the last couple of months LocalStack has started building a Snowflake emulator extension, which allows to develop and test your Snowflake data pipelines entirely on your local machine.

More details can be found here: https://discuss.localstack.cloud/t/introducing-the-localstack-snowflake-extension-experimental/665

Using the local emulator allows you to iterate very quickly on your data applications, and avoid any resource conflicts that can often happen when developing against shared databases. You can effectively develop your data pipelines literally while working offline. Besides, there are some obvious cost savings of not having to use the real cloud service.

There are some contact details in the Discuss post linked above - please get in touch if that sounds interesting and you'd like to give it a try by joining the beta program. We look forward to getting your feedback!

Another alternative is Fakesnow [2], an open source project that builds on top of duckdb. Fakesnow is a great project, but it is significantly less powerful than the LocalStack Snowflake extension.

References:

• [1] https://github.com/localstack/localstack
• [2] https://github.com/tekumara/fakesnow