ADA-C01 Question 383
Single answerManage organization costsAn organization administrator needs to identify which Snowflake accounts are driving the highest month-to-date spend across the organization and separate compute costs from storage costs for an executive review. The company has multiple accounts in one organization and wants to avoid building custom ETL pipelines. Which approach should the administrator use?
- A
Query the ORGANIZATION_USAGE views to aggregate usage and cost by account, using warehouse metering data for compute and storage usage views for storage
- B
Query each account's ACCOUNT_USAGE views and join them directly from a single account, because ACCOUNT_USAGE automatically includes all accounts in the organization
- C
Use only the WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY view in one account, because warehouse credits include both compute and storage charges for all accounts
- D
Use the RESOURCE_MONITORS view at the organization level, because resource monitors track all spend categories including storage across every account
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best answer is to use the SNOWFLAKE.ORGANIZATION_USAGE schema for centralized organization-wide cost analysis. This is the Snowflake-native approach for managing costs across multiple accounts in an organization and avoids building custom ETL pipelines from separate account-level sources. In practice, administrators use organization usage views to break down consumption by account and service category, then distinguish compute from storage using the appropriate metering and storage views. ACCOUNT_USAGE is account-specific, so it does not satisfy the requirement for centralized organization-wide reporting without additional consolidation work. WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY covers compute, not total spend. Resource monitors are useful for governance and alerts, but they are not a substitute for detailed organization cost reporting. Refer to Snowflake documentation for ORGANIZATION_USAGE and cost/usage views under organization billing and usage analysis best practices.
- A. Correct.
Correct. For organization-wide cost management, an organization administrator can use SNOWFLAKE.ORGANIZATION_USAGE views to analyze usage across accounts without creating custom ETL across multiple account-level data sources. Warehouse metering data is appropriate for compute consumption, while storage-related views provide the basis for storage cost analysis. This approach aligns with Snowflake best practice for centralized cross-account cost visibility.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. ACCOUNT_USAGE is scoped to an individual account, not the entire organization. An administrator could query each account separately and build consolidation logic, but that would require the kind of custom cross-account process the scenario wants to avoid. The misconception is assuming ACCOUNT_USAGE automatically rolls up organization-wide data.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY is focused on warehouse compute usage, not storage charges, and account-scoped usage would not by itself provide complete organization-wide visibility. The misconception is treating warehouse credits as a proxy for all Snowflake charges.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Resource monitors help control or alert on credit consumption, typically for compute-related usage, but they are not a comprehensive organization-level reporting mechanism for all cost categories. They do not provide full storage spend reporting across all accounts. The misconception is confusing governance controls with cost analytics datasets.