COF-C03 Question 200
Single answerResource MonitorsA Snowflake administrator needs to control monthly compute spending for a finance reporting warehouse. The requirement is to send an alert when usage reaches 80% of the monthly credit budget and to prevent any further warehouse compute once the full budget is consumed. The warehouse should become available again automatically at the start of the next month without manual intervention. Which configuration best meets these requirements?
- A
Create a resource monitor with a monthly frequency, set a NOTIFY trigger at 80% and a SUSPEND trigger at 100%, and assign the monitor to the warehouse.
- B
Create a resource monitor with a monthly frequency, set a NOTIFY trigger at 80% and a SUSPEND_IMMEDIATE trigger at 100%, and assign the monitor to the warehouse.
- C
Create a resource monitor on the database used by finance reporting, set a NOTIFY trigger at 80% and a SUSPEND trigger at 100%, and rely on the monitor to stop all compute for that database.
- D
Create a warehouse quota using ALTER WAREHOUSE, set an 80% warning threshold and a 100% hard stop, and configure the warehouse to reset on the first day of each month.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
This question tests practical use of resource monitors to manage compute cost. In Snowflake, resource monitors track credit usage by warehouses and can trigger actions such as NOTIFY, SUSPEND, and SUSPEND_IMMEDIATE at specified percentage thresholds. For this scenario, the best fit is a monthly resource monitor assigned to the finance warehouse with NOTIFY at 80% and SUSPEND at 100%. SUSPEND allows currently running statements to finish but blocks future warehouse resumes once the quota is reached, making it less disruptive than SUSPEND_IMMEDIATE. Because resource monitors can reset on a schedule such as monthly, the warehouse becomes usable again automatically after the reset. This aligns with Snowflake best practices for controlling warehouse credit consumption without relying on manual month-end intervention.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Resource monitors are used to control credit consumption for warehouses. A monitor can be configured with a monthly reset frequency and assigned to a specific warehouse. A NOTIFY action at 80% provides the alert, and a SUSPEND action at 100% prevents additional warehouse starts or resumes after the limit is reached. Because the monitor resets on its schedule, the warehouse can be used again automatically in the next month.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. SUSPEND_IMMEDIATE suspends currently running warehouses immediately when the threshold is reached, which is more disruptive than required. The scenario says to prevent further warehouse compute once the budget is consumed, which is satisfied by SUSPEND. SUSPEND stops new warehouse activity after the threshold but does not abruptly terminate a running workload at that moment.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Resource monitors are associated with warehouses or can be account-level for warehouses, not with databases. Database objects do not consume compute directly; warehouses do. This option reflects a common misconception that spending controls can be applied to databases rather than compute resources.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Snowflake does not provide warehouse credit quotas through ALTER WAREHOUSE in this way. Credit consumption controls are implemented with resource monitors, not warehouse-level quota syntax. This option is plausible because it sounds operationally convenient, but it does not reflect actual Snowflake functionality.