ADA-C01 Question 391
Single answerMonitor and calculate data transfer costs and replication costsA global company uses database replication from an AWS us-east-1 Snowflake account to an AWS eu-west-1 account for disaster recovery. The Snowflake administrator has been asked to determine which account is incurring the replication-related charges and how to monitor the volume that drives those charges over time. Which approach should the administrator use?
- A
Query the ORGANIZATION_USAGE views from any account in the organization; replication charges are billed to the target account, and the replicated bytes can be monitored only from the secondary account.
- B
Review usage in the source account because data transfer and replication charges are incurred by the account that stores the primary database; monitor the replication bytes using Account Usage views and replication history in the source account.
- C
Review warehouse metering in both accounts because replication cost is charged as virtual warehouse credit consumption; monitor the bytes transferred through QUERY_HISTORY.
- D
Review storage usage in the target account because replication is billed as Fail-safe storage; monitor the volume using TABLE_STORAGE_METRICS for replicated tables.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
In Snowflake, administrators must distinguish among storage charges, compute charges, and replication/data transfer charges. For cross-region or cross-cloud replication, the primary account is generally the account that incurs the replication-related data transfer costs. To monitor and estimate those costs, the best practice is to review replication activity from the source account using Snowflake's usage and replication history metadata rather than warehouse metering or table storage views. This is consistent with Snowflake documentation on replication/failover billing and Account Usage monitoring: storage views help analyze persisted data size, while replication history and usage views help track the data movement that drives replication and transfer charges.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Replication-related transfer charges are not billed to the target account simply because it is the secondary. For cross-region/cross-cloud replication, Snowflake bills data transfer and replication-related costs to the account that hosts the primary database or replication group. Also, monitoring is not limited to the secondary account; administrators typically review replication history and usage from the source side where replication is initiated and billed.
- B. Correct.
Correct. For replicated databases or failover/replication groups, the account containing the primary database/group is responsible for the associated data transfer and replication charges. To monitor the volume that drives those charges, administrators should use Snowflake usage and history views/functions related to replication in the source account, such as Account Usage and replication history, to track bytes replicated over time and correlate that with billing. This reflects how Snowflake attributes replication and transfer activity operationally and financially.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Replication charges are not the same as virtual warehouse credit consumption, so warehouse metering is not the right place to calculate replication costs. QUERY_HISTORY also tracks SQL execution metadata, not replication transfer volume for billing purposes. This distractor targets the common misconception that all billable activity appears as warehouse usage.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Replication is not billed as Fail-safe storage in the target account. Although replicated objects do consume storage in the secondary account, the question asks specifically about replication-related transfer costs and how to monitor the transferred volume. TABLE_STORAGE_METRICS can help with object storage analysis, but it does not represent the replication transfer bytes used to calculate replication/data transfer charges.