Designing an Immutable Data Lakehouse: Best Practices for Iceberg Snapshot Expiration

This article provides a comprehensive guide on designing an immutable data lakehouse with Apache Iceberg, focusing on snapshot expiration best practices. It explains how snapshot accumulation degrades query planning time and metadata size over time, and offers a detailed retention policy covering time-based expiration, count-based floors, and query window considerations. The guide includes a full maintenance sequence, monitoring table health, automation with Dremio, and strategies for scheduling maintenance without impacting query performance. It also addresses compliance and retention conflicts, making it essential for data engineers and architects managing Iceberg tables.