Are you preparing to move data to a Snowflake data warehouse? Creating a well-thought out plan before your big move is essential. It is important to establish a timeline, budget, team roles and goals before you launch into a big migration.

To help ensure your migration is a success, we’ve created a Snowflake migration checklist that covers many of the little details we sometimes forget when caught up in a big move.

Snowflake Migration Checklist

Document the existing solution

  • List databases and data objects that need to be migrated
  • Define known data quality issues to be addressed
  • List processes and tools that populate and pull data from the existing solution
  • List security roles, users and permissions
  • List Snowflake accounts that exist or need to be created
  • Establish frequency of security provision processes
  • Document the existing solution into an “as-is” architecture diagram

Determine a migration approach

  • List processes to migrate as is
  • List processes that need re-engineering
  • List processes that need to be fixed
  • Draft migration deliverables
  • Create desired architecture diagram

Capture the development and deployment process

  • List tools that will be introduced with the migration
  • Validate function and performance of snowflake connectors
  • List tools that will be deprecated after the migration
  • List development environments needed for the migration
  • List deployment processes used for the migration

Prioritize datasets for migration

  • List data sets to migrate first (prioritize list)
  • Create method for identifying process dependencies for data sets
  • Document process dependencies for data sets

Determine a testing approach

  • Prepare to test migration of legacy data, loading from data sources, and performance
  • Identify testing methods and success criteria
  • Prepare for anticipated exceptions caused by process fixes
  • Identify testing tools

Plan to implement security

  • Identify processes and tools to implement security
  • Determine if revisions need to be made before migrating roles, users, and permissions

Identify the migration team

  • Create list of migration team members and roles with contact info

Define the migration deadlines and budget

  • List business expectations for the migration deadline
  • Document budget allocated for the migration project

Determine the migration outcomes

  • List high-level desired outcomes and assumptions at the completion of the migration
  • Document plan for communicating the migration project wins to stakeholders