Building a Data Stack on a Budget: An Affordable Guide to Data Management Sujeet Pillai January 17, 2023

Database management

A data stack is a combination of various tools and technologies that work together to manage, store, and analyze data. It typically consists of a data storage engine, an ingestion tool, an analytics engine, and BI visualization tools. Data stacks have become quite central to an organization’s operations and growth in recent years.

Data management is an essential part of any organization, and the way data is managed has evolved over the years. Data lakes and data warehouses were once only affordable by larger organizations. However, this has changed with the open-source data stack ecosystem’s growth. The open-source data stack ecosystem has grown significantly in recent years, providing powerful alternatives for every layer of the stack. This has pushed the envelope for data stacks and reduced entry barriers for organizations to adopt a data stack.

One of the main reasons why data stacks have become more accessible is the availability of open-source alternatives. Open-source alternatives are available for every layer of the data stack that packs a serious punch in capability. These alternatives are often just as good, if not better, than their commercial counterparts. They also tend to be more flexible and customizable, which is essential for organizations that must tailor their data stack to their specific needs.

Another reason why data stacks have become more accessible is the availability of cheap cloud resources. Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure provide low-cost options for organizations to set up and run their data stacks. This has enabled even smaller organizations to afford a data stack.

Organizations need to consider this framework over a patchwork of point-to-point integrations seriously. A patchwork of point-to-point integrations is often a result of an ad-hoc approach to data management. This approach is not only difficult to manage but also limits the organization’s ability to gain insights from its data. On the other hand, a data stack framework provides a more structured approach to data management, making it easier to manage and providing the organization with the ability to gain insights from their data.

An Affordable Data Stack

Affordable data stacks that organizations can consider are as follows:

Storage Engine: Clickhouse

Clickhouse is a column-oriented database management system that can handle large data loads and has great query performance. It runs on commodity hardware and can be self-hosted using Docker. Clickhouse is designed to process large amounts of data, and its columnar storage model enhances its query performance.

Ingestion Engine: Airbyte

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform that automates the ingestion of data sources and can be monitored and managed from a UI. It can also be self-hosted using Docker and has the ability to use Clickhouse as a sink. Airbyte automates the ingestion of data sources, making it easy to bring data into the data stack.

Analytics Engine: DBT

DBT is a powerful analytics engine that helps organize data models and processing. It’s built on SQL with jinja templating superpowers, making it accessible to many more people. DBT is a hero in the data lakes space, helping enterprises organize their data models and processing. When building out an analytics process in DBT, it’s quite helpful to use a conceptual framework to organize your models. I found this blog excellent to be an excellent starting point, providing great insights. 

Visualization Engine: Metabase

Metabase is a powerful visualization tool that makes it easy for organizations to gain insights from their data. It has lots of visualizations that cover most bases. The SQL query builder or ‘question wizard’ in Metabase is quite powerful for non-SQL experts to get answers from their data. It also has a self-hostable open-source version and can easily be set up in Docker.

Infrastructure

For infrastructure, we recommend using Amazon Web Services. This stack can be deployed on a single m5.large instance for smaller-scale data and scaled up to a cluster configuration for larger data sets. Additionally, the different components of the stack can be separated into different servers for scaling. For example, if many Metabase users are accessing the data, it may be necessary to move Metabase onto its own server. Similarly, if ingestions are large, it’s best to move Airbyte to its server. And if storage and queries are large, it’s best to move Clickhouse into a cluster formation. This way, a company can ensure its system can handle more data as needed.

Production considerations

When it comes to taking the data stack to production, there are a lot of other considerations. Organizations should ensure reliable, fault-tolerant backups and provide security and role-based access. They should also build DBT models to cater to multiple use cases and normalize data values across sources. Other considerations may include monitoring and alerting, performance tuning, and disaster recovery planning.

Reliable, fault-tolerant backups are crucial to ensure that data is not lost in the event of a disaster. Organizations should have a well-defined backup and recovery plan in place. This should include regular backups, offsite storage of backups, and testing of backups to ensure they can be restored in an emergency.

Security and role-based access are also crucial implications. Organizations should ensure that only authorized personnel have access to sensitive data. This can be achieved by setting up role-based access controls, which ensure that only users with the necessary permissions can access sensitive data.

Further, organizations should ensure that their data is accurate, consistent, and reliable. This can be achieved by building DBT models that cater to multiple use cases and normalizing data values across data sources.

Finally, monitoring and alerting, performance tuning, and disaster recovery planning are also crucial. Organizations should ensure that their data stack is performing at optimal levels and that they are alerted to any issues that arise. Performance tuning is necessary to ensure that the data stack performs optimally. Disaster recovery planning is crucial to ensure that data can be recovered in the event of a disaster.

Conclusion

In conclusion, data stacks have become increasingly affordable and accessible for organizations of all sizes. The open-source data stack ecosystem has grown significantly, providing powerful alternatives for every layer of the stack. Designing DBT models to cater to multiple scenarios and standardizing data values across various sources are crucial. A data stack framework provides a more structured approach to data management, making it easier to manage and providing the organization with the ability to gain insights from their data.

Deploying a data lake to production with all these elements is a non-trivial technical exercise. If you do not have this expertise in-house, consider using the services of a consulting organization with expertise in this area, like Incentius. Drop us an email at info@incentius.com, and we’d be happy to help

Top 4 Benefits of Data Engineering Sumeet Shah May 31, 2022

Data Engineering’s purpose is to offer an orderly, uniform data flow that enables data-driven models like machine learning models and data analysis. Clive Humby stated, “Data is the new oil.” Unfortunately, many companies have been accumulating data for years but have no idea how to profit from it. What can be accomplished is just unclear. Data Engineering improves the efficiency of data science. If no such domain exists, we will have to devote more time to data analysis in an attempt to address difficult business challenges. 

Let us check out the Top 4 Benefits that Data Engineering offers businesses.

1. Helping Make Better Decisions:

Companies may leverage data-driven insights to better influence their decisions, resulting in improved outcomes. Data engineering allows Identifying types of customers or products that make for more targeted marketing. Your marketing and advertising activities will be more effective as a result of this. For example, a company might simulate changes in price or product offers to see how these affect client demand. Enterprises can utilize sales data on the revised items to gauge the success of the adjustments and display the findings to assist decision-makers in deciding whether to roll the changes out throughout the company. Companies’ managers may comprehend their consumer base using both older and newer technologies, such as business intelligence and machine learning. Furthermore, modern technology allows you to gather and evaluate fresh data on a constant basis to keep your understanding up to date as situations change.

2. Checking the Outcomes of Decisions:

In today’s turbulent marketplace, it’s critical to examine how previous decisions worked. Any time a data-driven decision is taken, additional data is generated. This data should be evaluated on a regular basis to see how new data-driven decisions may be made better. This is where data engineering is incorporated. As a result of the end-to-end perspective and assessment of important decisions, optimal data use will also ensure that continual improvements are implemented on an ongoing basis. You waste less time on decisions that do not fit your audience’s interests when you have a better grasp of what they want. Self-improvement is an ongoing process in data science. This results in reflecting the impact of prior decisions. Without self-reflection, no process is complete. It will be easier to make future decisions now that this has been accomplished.

3. Predicting the User Story to Improve the User Experience:

Products are the lifeblood of every company, and they are frequently the most significant investments they undertake. It would not be wrong to say that data engineering helps identify new scopes. The product management team’s job is to spot patterns that drive the strategic roadmap for new products, services, and innovations. Predictors are one of the most powerful aspects of machine learning. You may use machine-learning algorithms to peek into the future and forecast market behavior based on previous data. Machine-learning algorithms look for patterns that humans can’t see and use them to forecast the future based on historical data. Companies can stay competitive if they can anticipate what the market wants and deliver the product before it is needed. In today’s economy, a company can no longer rely on instinct to be competitive. Organizations may now develop procedures to track consumer feedback, product success, and what their competitors are doing with so much data to work with.

4. New Business Opportunities Identification:

Products are the lifeblood of every company, and they are frequently the most significant investments they undertake. It would not be wrong to say that data engineering helps identify new scopes. The product management team’s job is to spot patterns that drive the strategic roadmap for new products, services, and innovations. Predictors are one of the most powerful aspects of machine learning. You may use machine-learning algorithms to peek into the future and forecast market behavior based on previous data. Machine-learning algorithms look for patterns that humans can’t see and use them to forecast the future based on historical data. Companies can stay competitive if they can anticipate what the market wants and deliver the product before it is needed. In today’s economy, a company can no longer rely on instinct to be competitive. Organizations may now develop procedures to track consumer feedback, product success, and what their competitors are doing with so much data to work with.

Conclusion:

It’s an important aspect of implementing data science and analytics successfully. The sorts of tools and technology that are available are changing all the time. As we’ve seen, data engineering is concerned with the tools and technology parts of a data science or analytics project framework. If you’re serious about your software startup being data-centric, the most critical first step is to manage your data platform. Not simply to scale, but also because data security, compliance, and privacy are major problems right now. After all, it’s because of their data that you’ll be able to develop so rapidly, so invest in it first before focusing on analytics.

Introduction to Data Engineering and its Importance Sumeet Shah May 26, 2022

What is Data Engineering?

Data is the new oil’. Heard of it? Well, it’s tough to describe data engineering accurately. Data Engineering is a field that deals with data analysis and tasks such as obtaining and storing data from various sources. It entails planning and building the data infrastructure required to gather, clean, and format data so that it is accessible and usable to end users. This procedure guarantees that data is both valuable and accessible. Data engineering is primarily concerned with the practical applications of data collecting and processing. Data Engineering improves the efficiency of data science. Although it appears to be an easy job, it necessitates a high level of data literacy.

Importance of Data Engineering

Technological advancements have had a significant influence on the vitality of data throughout time. We used to create traditional data warehouses, give BI reporting, and perform upgrades and maintenance on such platforms. In today’s world of innovative startups and businesses, we’re building with new tools for the modern world. Cloud computing, open-source initiatives, and the massive expansion of data are all examples of these breakthroughs.

Data is there at every stage of the route, whether business teams are dealing with sales data or evaluating their lead life cycles. We no longer construct data warehouses. We’re creating data lakes and real-time data streams instead. In the era of big data, more controlled data implies more accurate forecasts. Data engineering is critical because it enables companies to optimize data for usability. There is no data without data engineering. There is no machine learning or AI without data. Data science requires data to run algorithms on.

If you don’t want to fall behind, focus on data engineering today so you can move on to deep analytics and data science before it becomes too late.

Role of Data Engineers

The “engineering” element is the key to knowing what data engineering is. For operational usage, data engineers construct up analytics databases and data pipelines. Much of their work entails preparing large amounts of data and ensuring that data flows are as smooth as possible. These pipelines must collect data from a variety of sources and store it in a single warehouse that represents it consistently as a single source of truth. The objective of data engineers is to ensure that data is not just abundant but also clear. Part of the work entails formatting both structured and unstructured data. Data that is structured can be stored in a database. They require essential abilities such as programming, mathematics, and computer science, as well as experience and soft skills in order to convey data patterns that aid corporate success. Data engineers are in charge of overseeing an organization’s analytics. Your data is given mobility by data engineers.

Data Engineers also handle some of the on-and-off duties, such as:

  1. Interaction with management to have a better understanding of the company’s goals
  2. New data validation procedures and data analysis tools are being developed
  3. Ensuring that data governance and security standards are followed
  4. Identifying ways for increasing data accuracy and efficiency
  5. Discovering tasks that will be automated using the required data

Conclusion

“Without a systematic way to start and keep data clean, bad data will happen.” — Donato Diorio

 It should go without saying that data is useless unless it can be read. As a result, data engineering is the initial stage in turning data into meaningful information. Nearly every goal of the business necessitates the use of data engineering. To prepare and analyze data for future study, data engineers employ a variety of skills and technologies. Analysts and scientists will be unable to access and operate with data without the infrastructure established by data engineers. And as a result, organizations risk losing access to one of their most precious assets. For company scalability, Incentius recognises the necessity of data engineering. That’s why we offer quality Data Engineering services to take your company to the next level.