--- title: Observe on Apache Iceberg: Unlocking Open Observability description: Snowflake's Observe product now supports storing telemetry data as Apache Iceberg tables in customer-owned Amazon S3 buckets, currently in private preview.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/observe-on-apache-iceberg-unlocking-open-observability-xanumy1dx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Observe on Apache Iceberg: Unlocking Open Observability | daily.dev og:description: Snowflake's Observe product now supports storing telemetry data as Apache Iceberg tables in customer-owned Amazon S3 buckets, currently in private preview.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/observe-on-apache-iceberg-unlocking-open-observability-xanumy1dx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/XANUMy1dx.png og:image:alt: Observe on Apache Iceberg: Unlocking Open Observability og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Observe on Apache Iceberg: Unlocking Open Observability **[Snowflake](https://daily.dev/sources/snowflake)** · 7 min read · 11 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Snowflake's Observe product now supports storing telemetry data as Apache Iceberg tables in customer-owned Amazon S3 buckets, currently in private preview. Observability data (logs, metrics, traces) is written as standard Iceberg v3 tables, enabling any Iceberg-compatible engine — Spark, DuckDB, Trino, PyIceberg — to query it directly via a read-only Iceberg REST Catalog. The full Observe experience (dashboards, monitors, AI SRE, OPAL transformations) works identically on Iceberg-backed data. Key benefits include data portability and ownership, cost reduction by decoupling storage from compute, elimination of ETL pipelines to join telemetry with business data, and compliance-friendly direct access to raw telemetry from customer-controlled storage. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Observe on Apache Iceberg and how does it change where observability data is stored? Observe on Apache Iceberg, now in private preview from Snowflake, stores logs, metrics and traces as Apache Iceberg tables directly in a customer's own Amazon S3 bucket instead of a vendor-locked format. Observe accesses the bucket via a customer-controlled IAM role; revoking that role removes Observe's access while the data stays in the bucket in open format, built on Snowflake-managed Iceberg tables using the v3 specification. _Teams weighing vendor lock-in in their observability stack can track storage architecture shifts like this via daily.dev._ ### Which query engines can read Iceberg tables produced by Observe on Iceberg? Apache Spark, DuckDB, Trino and PyIceberg can all read the Iceberg tables directly today, since Observe exposes a read-only Iceberg REST Catalog on its API backed by Snowflake Horizon Catalog. External engines read the data files straight from the customer's S3 bucket, so the query path bypasses Observe entirely, enabling joins with business data, batch jobs, compliance audits and ML training on the same telemetry. _Engineers picking a query engine for telemetry analytics can follow interoperability updates like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [AWS CloudWatch Evolves into Unified Observability Platform with Apache Iceberg Support](https://daily.dev/posts/aws-cloudwatch-evolves-into-unified-observability-platform-with-apache-iceberg-support-z4emjmdxn) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Couchbase Analytics \+ Apache Iceberg on Google Cloud: Query Your Lakehouse Without ETL](https://daily.dev/posts/couchbase-analytics-apache-iceberg-on-google-cloud-query-your-lakehouse-without-etl-l5aai8dvk) · Couchbase · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Amazon Quick now supports S3 tables bucket as a data source](https://daily.dev/posts/amazon-quick-now-supports-s3-tables-bucket-as-a-data-source-awsjs4sqe) · AWS · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Building an Observability Data Lake with Snowflake and OpenTelemetry](https://daily.dev/posts/building-an-observability-data-lake-with-snowflake-and-opentelemetry-9rxqnabdv) · Snowflake Community · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#snowflake](https://daily.dev/tags/snowflake), [#opentelemetry](https://daily.dev/tags/opentelemetry), [#data-lake](https://daily.dev/tags/data-lake), [#apache-iceberg](https://daily.dev/tags/apache-iceberg) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/observe-on-apache-iceberg-unlocking-open-observability-xanumy1dx) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Observe on Apache Iceberg: Unlocking Open Observability","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/observe-on-apache-iceberg-unlocking-open-observability-xanumy1dx","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/observe-on-apache-iceberg-unlocking-open-observability-xanumy1dx"},"datePublished":"2026-08-04T14:31:25.398Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T21:44:52.055Z","description":"Snowflake's Observe product now supports storing telemetry data as Apache Iceberg tables in customer-owned Amazon S3 buckets, currently in private preview....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/a70fc3b89b68b7d1623c5d7529f1fc62?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/a70fc3b89b68b7d1623c5d7529f1fc62?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Snowflake","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Snowflake","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/fd3e7ffcdf2c438db701a0c6b34281ca","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/snowflake"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/observe-on-apache-iceberg-unlocking-open-observability-xanumy1dx","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":11},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"observability,snowflake,opentelemetry,data-lake,apache-iceberg","timeRequired":"PT7M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Snowflake","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/snowflake"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Observe on Apache Iceberg: Unlocking Open Observability"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/observe-on-apache-iceberg-unlocking-open-observability-xanumy1dx#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is Observe on Apache Iceberg and how does it change where observability data is stored?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Observe on Apache Iceberg, now in private preview from Snowflake, stores logs, metrics and traces as Apache Iceberg tables directly in a customer's own Amazon S3 bucket instead of a vendor-locked format. 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