Introduction
In today’s data-driven world, organizations need to process growing volumes of information quickly and cost-effectively. Traditional data warehouses can be expensive, slow to scale, and inflexible in the face of diverse data formats. Modern data lakes, on the other hand, offer a more open, flexible, and affordable approach—especially when powered by cutting-edge query engines and table formats.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how to build a robust, high-performance data lake using Trino (formerly PrestoSQL) and Apache Iceberg as the foundational technologies. We’ll also dive into why running these workloads on Bare-Metal.io can significantly reduce your operating costs by eliminating S3 API charges, providing predictable pricing, and delivering steady, reliable performance.
Why Trino and Iceberg?
1. Trino for Fast, Distributed SQL Queries:
Trino is a distributed SQL query engine designed to handle large-scale analytics workloads, often more efficiently and at a lower cost than traditional data warehouse solutions. With Trino, you can perform interactive queries against multiple data sources—object storage, databases, Kafka streams—and unify all that data under one SQL interface. Its architecture is ideal for low-latency queries on massive datasets, giving your data team the power to quickly iterate, analyze, and innovate.
2. Apache Iceberg for a Next-Generation Table Format:
Iceberg is a high-performance open table format built for big data analytics. It provides a more flexible and reliable abstraction than the Hive Metastore tables of the past. Iceberg’s key benefits include:
- Schema Evolution: Add, remove, or rename columns without rewriting entire datasets.
- Partition Evolution: Adapt partitions over time to optimize queries without full rewrites.
- ACID Transactions: Ensure data quality and consistency with transactional guarantees.
- Metadata Pruning: Query engines skip unnecessary data, resulting in improved query performance and lower storage I/O.
By pairing Trino with Iceberg, you can build a data lakehouse environment that’s both high-performance and future-proof. Your data engineers and analysts gain the agility they need, while your operations team enjoys simplified data management.
The Bare-Metal.io Advantage
Once you’ve settled on Trino and Iceberg for your data layer, the next question is: where should you run it?
Cloud object stores, such as Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage, are common choices for data lake storage. They’re easy to scale, but their pricing models can sometimes be unpredictable and expensive. Every LIST, GET, and PUT call hits you with incremental S3 API costs. And with high query volumes, even small charges add up over time, often in unexpected ways.
Enter Bare-Metal.io—an alternative that gives you the cloud-like experience of scale and flexibility, but with on-premises, metal-level performance and predictable pricing. Here’s how:
- No S3 API Costs: Bare-Metal.io’s storage solution does not charge per API call. Instead of racking up costs with each query, you pay a straightforward, predictable fee. This is especially impactful for workloads that perform frequent metadata operations—an area where Iceberg excels at reducing overhead. With no API call costs looming in the background, you retain full control over your budget.
- Predictable Performance and Pricing: Traditional cloud vendors often have complex pricing tiers that make capacity planning a guessing game. In contrast, Bare-Metal.io’s pricing model is transparent and stable. Your systems run on dedicated hardware with consistent performance characteristics. You know exactly what you’re paying for and can forecast costs more accurately—an essential advantage when operating large-scale analytics environments.
- High I/O Throughput and Low Latency: By running your analytics stack close to the metal, you get top-tier I/O throughput. This translates into faster queries, better concurrency, and improved end-user experiences. Coupled with Iceberg’s metadata pruning and Trino’s efficient query execution, you can achieve optimal performance without the unpredictable I/O patterns and network overhead common in public cloud object storage solutions.
Step-by-Step: Building Your Data Lake
1. Set Up Your Bare-Metal.io Environment:
The folks are bare-metal.io will assist you in deploying your data lake using object storage from MinIO and compute nodes running Trino.
2. Install and Configure Iceberg:
Install the Iceberg runtime and configure it to use your Bare-Metal.io storage as the underlying file system. Since Iceberg works well with a variety of storage backends, you’ll simply need to point Iceberg’s configuration to your mounted storage paths. Ensure that you enable Iceberg’s features like snapshotting and schema evolution to harness its full power.
3. Deploy Trino on Your Cluster:
Install Trino on your compute nodes. Configure the catalog and schema settings so that Trino recognizes Iceberg tables. Trino’s Iceberg connector works seamlessly with the Iceberg metadata, letting you query data using SQL without worrying about underlying file structures.
4. Load Your Data:
With your environment ready, load data into Iceberg tables. You can either batch-load historical data using bulk ingestion or ingest streaming data for real-time analytics. Once the data is in place, run a few Trino queries to ensure everything’s working correctly.
5. Optimize and Scale as Needed:
As your workload grows, you can add more compute or storage to your Bare-Metal.io environment. Scale-out horizontally by adding more Trino worker nodes, or scale-up with higher performance hardware. Because you’re on dedicated metal, you have full control over your scaling strategy without unpredictable cloud service charges.
6. Keep Costs in Check and Performance High:
Monitor your query patterns, storage usage, and hardware utilization. With Bare-Metal.io’s transparent pricing, you’ll know exactly how costs change as you grow. Fine-tune Iceberg’s partitioning strategy and leverage Trino’s caching or cost-based optimizations to get the most from your investment.
Conclusion
Building a modern data lake with Trino and Apache Iceberg can transform your analytics architecture, delivering agility, performance, and reliability. By running this stack on Bare-Metal.io, you go one step further—removing the hidden fees of S3 API calls and achieving predictable pricing. As a result, you gain the confidence and clarity needed to scale your data operations without fear of runaway costs or unpredictable latencies.
Whether you’re launching a new data analytics initiative or modernizing your existing stack, consider combining Trino, Iceberg, and Bare-Metal.io. You’ll enjoy a future-proof data lake platform that delivers the right balance of performance, flexibility, and cost-efficiency—putting you firmly in control of your analytics destiny.
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