Snowflake, Databricks, and Azure Ship Postgres-Compatible Databases with Custom Storage Engines
By
samaysharma
Crusty in the right places. Worth the chew.
Summary
Three major cloud data platforms — Snowflake, Databricks, and Microsoft Azure — have all recently shipped Postgres-compatible databases with custom storage engines and scale-out compute/shared storage architectures. Snowflake Postgres (GA) builds on Crunchy Data's work with pg_lake for lakehouse integration. Databricks Lakebase (GA on AWS, preview on Azure) uses the Neon engine with Mooncake integration. Azure HorizonDB (invite-only preview) is the most architecturally aggressive, built on Microsoft's own engine with claims of up to 3,072 nodes. The article analyzes how each platform approaches Postgres compatibility, their architectural trade-offs, and what this means for vendor lock-in in the data platform ecosystem.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledSnowflake Postgres is GA, built on the Crunchy Data team's work, with pg_lake as the lakehouse hook.
Databricks Lakebase is GA on AWS, public preview on Azure, built on the Neon engine plus the Mooncake integration work.
Azure HorizonDB is in invite-only preview and is the most aggressive of the three architecturally — Microsoft built their own engine, claims up to 3,072
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