Virtual Warehouses
Overview
A virtual warehouse is a cluster of computing resources in Bytehouse that we can scale out on demand. A warehouse provides the required resources, such as CPU, memory, and temporary storage, to perform the following operations:
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Executing SQL statements that require compute resources (e.g. retrieving rows from tables and views) for short and long-running queries.
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Performing DML operations, such as:
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Updating rows in tables (DELETE , INSERT , UPDATE).
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Loading data into tables
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Unloading data from tables
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Virtual warehouses have the following advantages:
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Read-write separation and resource separation: Separate Virtual Warehouses can be created to perform data-loading tasks, or run queries in real-time. Creating Virtual Warehouses also allows different departments or business lines to have a clear separation of resources, avoiding potential impact on performances between different queries.
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One-click scaling: Virtual Warehouses can easily scale up or down according to business requirements for cost-effective resource utilisation.
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Access control: Virtual warehouses can also be granted different permissions depending on the applied role. This can provide users with fine-grained access control for access to data.
Virtual Warehouse Sizes
- XS (Extra Small)
- S (Small)
- M (Medium)
- L (Large)
- XL (Extra Large)
Managing Virtual Warehouses
Bytehouse Virtual Warehouse page provides an interface for creating, starting, and suspend virtual warehouse on-demand, as well as configuring and scaling up/down its compute resources.

Creating Virtual Warehouse

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In the Virtual Warehouse page, click the +New button on the top right corner
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Create Virtual Warehouse dialog will open and using this dialog we can specify the virtual warehouse attribute to allocate compute resources.
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Once done, click OK and the virtual warehouse will be automatically created and started.
- Note: ByteHouse Virtual Warehouses have auto-suspend/resume functionality enabled by default.
If auto-suspend is enabled, the virtual warehouse will be shut down if there is no request during the time interval.
If auto-resume is enabled, users do not need to manually enable the virtual warehouses. Instead, the Virtual Warehouse will resume when a new query is submitted. Please take note that a longer time is needed for the first query to run when a virtual warehouse has auto-resumed.
Updating a Virtual Warehouse
Virtual Warehouse configurations can be updated at any time with several limitations:
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Only the size, auto-suspend, auto-resume, and description can be updated
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If the change results in the Virtual Warehouse being suspended, this may cause running queries to be interrupted.
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Changes to Virtual Warehouse sizes will only take effect after the Virtual Warehouse resumes functionality from a suspended state.
Resuming a Virtual Warehouse
Resuming a Virtual Warehouse that was suspended can be done using any one of the following options:
- Resume one or multiple virtual warehouses using item selection and click ▷ the button.

- Resume one particular virtual warehouses using triple-dot drop-down and click Resume

- After enabling auto-resume, users can directly choose virtual warehouse from SQL worksheet, then turn on the virtual warehouse by query running.

Suspending Virtual Warehouse
A Virtual Warehouse can be suspended using any one of the following options:
- Resume one or multiple virtual warehouses using item selection and click ⏸️ button.

- Resume one particular virtual warehouses using triple-dot drop-down and click Stop

- After enabling auto-suspend, if there is no request during the time interval, the virtual warehouse will be auto-suspended. Currently we support the following intervals:
- 5 minutes
- 30 minutes
- 1 hour
- 6 hours
NOTE: suspending a virtual warehouse can cause any queries that run within this warehouse to fail instantly. Be careful when performing this operation.
Dropping Virtual Warehouse
Dropping a Virtual Warehouse effectively suspends all the running queries and removes the cluster from deployment and the virtual warehouse from the lists of available virtual warehouses.

Updated 11 months ago