There are various platforms, SaaS offerings, tools, opensource available in market, while choosing the best one is always a challenge.

1. Data Platform
Architecture Principles
and Evaluation Criteria
Pooja Kelgaonkar,
Senior Data Architect at Rackspace Technology

2. Pooja Kelgaonkar
■ Senior Data Architect - GCP, Snowflake
■ Specialist in Data Modernization Implementations
■ Expertise in “Data” domain
■ Learner, Tech Blogger, Tech evangelist
■ Reading, listening Indian classical music

3. ■ Architecture Principles
■ Data Modernization
■ Data Platform Offerings
■ Evaluation Criteria
■ Sample Use Case - Evaluation Comparison
Agenda
3

4. Data Architecture
Principles

5. Framework Pillars
Operational Excellence
05
● Serviceability - Easy Operations & Maint
● Maintenance - Data Pipeline Maintenance
● Reduced Ops Activities & Cost
Efficiency
04 ● Performance Efficiency
● Cost Efficiency - Cost Optimized
Availability
03
● Reliability
● Resiliency of System
● Availability - System Time UP
Scalability
02
● Horizontal Scaling
● Vertical Scaling
● Auto Scaling
Security
01
● Access Management & Controls
● Data Protection - Encryption , Data Masking
● Compliance - ISO, HIPPA , PCI DSS
● Data Governance
5

6. ■ Cloud Migration / Adoption - 5Rs of transformation
■ Rehost , Refactor , Revise , Rebuild and Replace
Data Modernization Journey
Data Discovery
Analysis of existing Data Architecture,
System Design and evaluating the need,
requirements of new data system
Data Architecture & Assessment
Designing new data platform, assessment of data
modelling, Data Governance and Security
Data Architecture &
Engineering
Data Platform implementation, Data
Pipeline development and enhancement
POCs. Designing end to end cycle.
Go Live & DataOps
Soft launch/ early cut off to integrate with
other systems and signing off from
business users. Implementing operations
of new platform and modified pipelines
Data Migration & Pipeline
Development/Conversion
Actual pipeline development, conversion on
new platform. Implementing , testing and
validating pipelines/data on new platform.
05
01
02 03
04
05
01
02 03
04
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7. Design Framework Pillars & Considerations
7
Teams
Architects Engineering Operations
Who?
When? How?
Business Drive
Technology Drive
Management &
Engagement Drive
What?
End User SLAs Assessment
& SLA Setting
System Assessment &
Technology Evaluations
Signed Up Services vs Open Source vs
Hybrid Evaluations
Business Assessment
Technology Evangelist
Sign Up for Services
Business Teams

8. Data Platform
Offerings

9. There are various offerings to implement Data Platform by Public Cloud
providers for DB / DW / Data Lake / Data Mesh / SQL / NoSQL etc.
Cloud Native
● AWS Glue
● EMR
● Kinesis, Opensearch
● RDS , Aurora
● Redshift
● DynamoDB , DocumentDB
AWS
● Azure Data Factory
● HDInsight
● Azure Stream Analytics
● Azure SQL, Managed SQL
● SQL Server, PostgreSQL
● MariaDB, CosmosDB, Managed
Cassandra
Azure
● DataFlow, Data Fusion
● DataProc
● Pub/Sub, Stream
● Cloud SQL , Cloud Spanner
● BigQuery , BigLake
● Bigtable, Firestore, Memorystore
GCP
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10. There are a variety of offerings to implement data platform and design data
pipelines using native and open source services.
Data on Cloud - Common Offerings
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11. Data Platform -
Evaluation Criteria
(Assessment Phase)

12. Evaluation - Pre-Requisites
Evaluation
Criteria
Existing/Cross
Application Platform to
be Evaluated
New Platforms to be
Explored
Platform Offerings
Existing Support Tier/
Billing Plans
Platform Offerings
Probable Platform to be
Evaluated, Cost
Comparisons Done?
Managed/Native Services /
BYOL services
Existing System Licenses,
Integrators- BI, OPS tools
Managed/Native Services /
BYOL services
Existing System Licenses,
Integrators - BI, OPS tools
Specific Evaluation or Open
Evaluation to Select Best Fit
for Given Use Case
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13. 13
Evaluation - Inputs
Capex vs Opex
% of Data Scan vs
Processed
Compute vs
Storage
Utilization
Data Challenges
System
Challenges
Capex vs Opex
% Storage vs Scan vs Processed
Compute vs Storage Utilization
% Data Challenges
System Challenges

14. Evaluation - CheckPoints
1
Data Operations & Business
Critical Requirements
● Data Pipeline Management - Monitoring & Operations
● Business Requirements - 24X7 Monitoring vs SLAs
● Critical Applications - Availability & SLAs
3
Business Checkpoint
● Data Availability - SLAs
● End User Agreements
● Business Requirements - Specific to Tooling
● Existing Cost utilization
● Performance Ratio - Current vs Expected
● Modernization Drive
5 Data Platform Checkpoint
● Type of Data - Structured, Semi-Structured,
Unstructured
● Sources of Data - Files , DBs, ioTs, Devices,
APIs
● Consumers of Data - Users vs System
● Frequency of Data - Batch, RealTime
● Data Storage - Active vs Passive
● Data Modelling - Schema, Tables , DB
Objects
2
Data Analytics Checkpoint
● Data Analytics - BI Tooling
● Predictive Analytics - Algorithms, Tools,
Libraries used
● AI/ML Use Cases - Customer Facing vs
In-House
● Enterprise vs Cloud Native
4
Data Processing Checkpoint
● Target Systems Integrations
● Data Usage - Hot Data vs Cold Data
● Data Stored vs Data Processed vs Reads
● Data Pipelines - Batch vs Streaming
● Data Pipeline Complexity - S/M/C/VC
● Data Pipeline Scheduling - Tools , Cron jobs,
Native Schedulers, Event based
● ETL vs ELT Requirements
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15. 15
Evaluation - Metrics
Checkpoint Category Metrics
Data
Checkpoint
Data
Integrators
No of Sources
No of Target
No of Specific Systems
Total Storage Volume
Daily Delta Volume
Data
Modelling
Frequency of Schema
Evolution
No of Objects
% of NoSQL Objects
% of PL SQL Objects
Data
Processing
Data
Pipelines
No of S/M/C Jobs
No of External Functions
Integrated (Java/Python/SQL)
No of ETL Jobs (Tool Based)
No of Compute Intense Jobs
No of Storage Intense Jobs
Checkpoint Category Metrics
Business
Checkpoint
Operations No of Times SLA Challenged
No of End Users Affected
Reliability No of times Data compromised
No of DR activities
No of end users impacted
Performance
Efficiency
Total Batch Time
No of Times Batch SLA Impacted
No of End User Reports
No of End Users/Consumers
No of Poor Performing Reports/Queries
Cost
Utilization
Overall Billing ( Capex )
Total Operations, Maint cost
Data
Operations
Monitoring No of Support Team Members
No of Monitoring Dashboards
Data Analytics Analytics No of ML Jobs/Algorithms
ML Integrators

16. Data Platform -
Evaluation Use Case

17. Evaluation - Pre-Requisites
17
Evaluation
Criteria
Existing/Cross
Application Platform to
be Evaluated
New Platforms to be
Explored
Platform Offerings
Existing Support Tier/
Billing Plans
Platform Offerings
Probable Platform to be
Evaluated, Cost
Comparisons Done?
Managed/Native Services /
BYOL services
Existing System Licenses,
Integrators- BI, OPS tools
Managed/Native Services /
BYOL services
Existing System Licenses,
Integrators - BI, OPS tools
Specific Evaluation or Open
Evaluation to Select Best Fit
for Given Use Case

18. Evaluation - Inputs
■ Domain - Retail , DW - Teradata, ETL - DataStage
■ Platform - Recently Signed up for Google Cloud Platform
■ Data Platform - Evaluate GCP Services to Setup Data Warehouse Platform
■ DW Size - 120TB (70 TB Active + 50 TB Passive )
■ Daily Volume - 1TB ( 80% Batch + 20% Streaming )
■ Data - Structured & Semi-structured (JSON, XML)
■ Data Pipelines - Mostly ELT - Datastage to Teradata (landing layer), Teradata SQL to Transform Data
■ Data Analytics - Tableau Reports - Customer Reports
■ Enterprise Scheduler - Control-M , Ticketing Tool - JIRA , Alerting via Slack, Email
■ Monitoring Dashboards , 24X7 Support Team
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19. DW - Google BigQuery vs Azure Synapse
BigQuery Synapse Observations
● Supports More Than 90% of Requirements
● SaaS Offering , Cloud Managed
● Very Well Integrated
1 Data Platform
Checkpoint
● Native Drivers to Support Batch & Stream
● Highest Data Processing Speed
● Storage vs Compute - Scaling In and Out
● Automatic Scaling, Performance Efficient
2 Data Processing
Checkpoint
● Can Be Integrated With Any BI Tools
● Support AI/ML Libraries and Jobs
● Performance Efficient - Data Processing , Scanning
3 Data Analytics
Checkpoint
● Customized Logging & Monitoring
● Native vs Customized Dashboards
● Integration With Various Alerting, Messaging Tools
5 Data Operations
● High Availability
● Automatic Failover , No DR Required
● Performance & Cost Efficient
● Pay as You Go vs Commitment Comparison Based on
Overall Usage
4 Business Checkpoint
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20. Evaluation - Final Report
Approach 1 Approach 2
DW BigQuery BigQuery
ETL + ELT Pipelines
Modify DS jobs to use BQ connector to load data to BQ
landing layer
Convert DS load jobs to BQ load jobs to pull data from source
and load to BQ
(this is depending on types of source systems and integration
complexity)
Data Storage
Store active data in BQ native tables with roll up policies
and store passive datasets on GCS layer depending on
usage of tables. External tables can be built on GCS
datasets.
Store active data in BQ native tables with roll up policies and
store passive datasets on GCS layer depending on usage of
tables.External tables can be built on GCS datasets.
Data Analytics Tableau connections can be replaced with BQ connections Tableau connections can be replaced with BQ connections
Data Pipeline Scheduler &
Maint
Control-M can be used to trigger the pipelines,
Orchestration can be done using Composer. Existing
ticketing tools, alerting tools can be used as is
Control-M can be used to trigger the pipelines, Orchestration can
be done using Composer.Existing ticketing tools, alerting tools
can be used as is
BigQuery is opted here post evaluation which is completely based on the initial sign up to GCP as well as data storage % ratio between active and
passive storage. Azure Synapse can offer the same capabilities however choices here are business & enterprise driven.
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21. Thank You
Stay in Touch
Pooja Kelgaonkar
poojakelgaonkar@gmail.com & pooja.kelgaonkar@rackspace.com
www.linkedin.com/in/poojakelgaonkar
poojakelgaonkar.medium.com