COF-C03 Question 323
Single answerAccountsA company is deploying Snowflake for two separate business units: Finance and Marketing. Each unit needs independent user and role administration, separate virtual warehouses for cost control, and the ability to suspend one unit's compute resources without affecting the other. However, the company wants to avoid managing duplicate metadata objects such as databases, schemas, and security policies where possible. Which approach best meets these requirements?
- A
Create separate Snowflake accounts for Finance and Marketing so each unit has full administrative isolation, even though metadata objects must be managed separately in each account.
- B
Create separate warehouses and roles for Finance and Marketing within a single Snowflake account so they can share centralized metadata while maintaining independent compute and delegated administration.
- C
Create separate organizations for Finance and Marketing so they can share databases and schemas while keeping compute resources isolated.
- D
Use a single warehouse for both business units and control costs by assigning different resource monitors to the same warehouse for each unit.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The best solution is to use a single Snowflake account with separate virtual warehouses and delegated access control through roles. In Snowflake, warehouses are the compute layer and can be started, stopped, resized, and monitored independently. This makes them ideal for isolating compute usage between business units while keeping shared access to centrally managed metadata objects such as databases and schemas within the same account. By contrast, multiple accounts introduce stronger isolation but also require separate management of many account-level objects. Snowflake best practices generally align account boundaries with stronger administrative, compliance, or regional isolation needs, while using multiple warehouses and RBAC within a single account when teams need separate compute but shared data and metadata.
- A. Incorrect.
This is incorrect because separate Snowflake accounts do provide stronger isolation for administration, billing boundaries, and account-level settings, but they do not avoid duplicate management of metadata objects. Databases, schemas, roles, and many governance objects are account-scoped. If the goal is to minimize duplicate metadata management, separate accounts add operational overhead rather than reduce it.
- B. Correct.
This is correct because a single Snowflake account can contain multiple virtual warehouses, databases, schemas, users, and roles. Separate warehouses allow each business unit's compute to be managed and suspended independently, which satisfies cost-control and operational isolation for compute. Role-based access control can delegate administration within the same account, while shared metadata in the account avoids unnecessary duplication of objects.
- C. Incorrect.
This is incorrect because organizations in Snowflake are used to group and manage accounts, not to create shared runtime environments where databases and schemas are directly shared across business units. Creating separate organizations would not help with centralized metadata management and is not the appropriate mechanism for this requirement.
- D. Incorrect.
This is incorrect because a single warehouse would not allow one business unit's compute to be suspended without affecting the other. In addition, resource monitors are associated with warehouses or accounts, not with subsets of users in a way that would turn one shared warehouse into independently controllable compute environments for each unit.