ADA-C01 Question 137
Select 2Evaluate the benefits and costs of using a Snowflake OrganizationA global enterprise currently runs separate Snowflake accounts for different business units in AWS and Azure. Each account has its own ACCOUNTADMIN team, and corporate leadership wants a centralized view of usage and billing across all accounts. They are also considering creating additional accounts for regional subsidiaries next year. The lead Snowflake administrator is evaluating whether to adopt a Snowflake Organization. Which TWO statements most accurately describe the benefits and costs of using a Snowflake Organization in this scenario?
- A
A Snowflake Organization can provide centralized visibility for all accounts under the organization, including organization-level usage and billing views, which helps corporate administrators monitor costs across regions and business units.
- B
Using a Snowflake Organization automatically merges account-level roles and privileges across all member accounts, reducing the need for separate account administration.
- C
Creating and managing a Snowflake Organization can simplify governance of multiple accounts and future account creation, but it does not eliminate the need to administer security and objects separately within each account.
- D
A Snowflake Organization is required before replication or data sharing can occur between Snowflake accounts in different regions or cloud platforms.
- E
The main cost of using a Snowflake Organization is additional virtual warehouse charges that Snowflake adds to every query executed in organization member accounts.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C
Explanation
The best answers are options 1 and 3. In Snowflake, an Organization is designed for customers that operate multiple accounts and need centralized visibility and administration at a higher level than any single account. Key benefits include viewing and monitoring usage and billing across the organization and managing account inventory and account creation more consistently. This is especially useful for complex enterprises operating across clouds, regions, or subsidiaries.
However, adopting an Organization does not collapse account boundaries. Each account still retains its own roles, grants, databases, warehouses, and administrative responsibilities. Therefore, the benefit is centralized oversight and account lifecycle management, not shared account-level RBAC or automatic security unification.
From a cost/benefit perspective, the practical "costs" are administrative and operational rather than a Snowflake-imposed per-query fee: teams must still manage security and objects in each account, and multi-account strategies can introduce governance complexity even while improving separation and visibility.
Relevant Snowflake documentation areas include Organizations and organization administration, organization-level usage/billing views, and account management guidance. Best practice is to use an Organization when centralized visibility and coordinated multi-account governance are important, while recognizing that account isolation remains in place by design.
- A. Correct.
Correct. A primary benefit of a Snowflake Organization is centralized administration and visibility across multiple accounts. Organizations support organization-level views for usage, billing, and account inventory, which is valuable for enterprises with many accounts spanning business units, regions, or cloud providers. This aligns directly with the scenario's need for consolidated cost monitoring.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A Snowflake Organization does not unify or merge account-level RBAC across member accounts. Roles, grants, users, objects, and security administration remain scoped to each account unless separately managed through account-specific processes. Candidates may choose this option if they confuse organization-level administration with cross-account identity or privilege consolidation.
- C. Correct.
Correct. Organizations are useful for enterprises that need to manage multiple Snowflake accounts, especially when planning future account expansion. They help with centralized account management and visibility, including creating additional accounts under the organization. However, each account still has its own securable objects, roles, and operational administration boundaries. This is an important tradeoff when evaluating organizational overhead versus centralized control.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A Snowflake Organization is not a prerequisite for replication or secure data sharing capabilities. While certain cross-region or cross-cloud features may involve business-critical edition requirements and account configuration, they do not generally require the accounts to be grouped in the same organization. This distractor targets the misconception that all multi-account capabilities depend on Organizations.
- E. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Snowflake does not impose a special per-query virtual warehouse surcharge simply because an account belongs to an organization. Costs still come from normal Snowflake consumption such as compute, storage, and data transfer, plus whatever operational overhead the company incurs in managing multiple accounts. This option is plausible because organizations are associated with billing visibility, but not with an added warehouse tax.