ADA-C01 Question 416
Single answerUse BudgetsA Snowflake administrator needs to help a finance team monitor monthly spending for a business-critical ETL warehouse. The requirement is to receive notifications when the warehouse's month-to-date spend reaches 50%, 80%, and 100% of a target amount, without preventing workloads from running. Which approach should the administrator use?
- A
Create a budget for the warehouse, define the monthly spending limit, and configure custom notification thresholds at 50%, 80%, and 100%
- B
Create a resource monitor on the warehouse with triggers at 50%, 80%, and 100%, because budgets are designed only for enforcing credit suspension
- C
Set a warehouse quota using ALTER WAREHOUSE so Snowflake sends notifications at the specified percentages but does not suspend the warehouse
- D
Create a budget on the database used by the ETL jobs, because budgets can only track database object costs and not warehouse spending
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best solution is to use a Snowflake budget for the warehouse. Budgets are designed to help organizations monitor spend against a target amount and notify stakeholders when configured thresholds are crossed. This aligns directly with the business requirement: track month-to-date spend and send alerts at 50%, 80%, and 100% without interrupting workloads. By contrast, resource monitors are a different feature focused on warehouse credit consumption and can be used to notify and optionally suspend warehouses when thresholds are reached. If the requirement is cost visibility and alerting rather than enforcement, budgets are the better fit. This reflects Snowflake best practices for separating cost governance/visibility from compute-enforcement controls.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Snowflake budgets are intended for cost monitoring and alerting. A budget can be associated with supported objects such as warehouses, and administrators can configure spending limits and custom notification thresholds. This fits the requirement to notify stakeholders at defined percentages of spend without stopping compute usage.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. This confuses budgets with resource monitors. Resource monitors are primarily used to track and control warehouse credit consumption and can take actions such as notifying, suspending, or suspending immediately. The statement that budgets are only for enforcing credit suspension is false; budgets are for monitoring/alerting on spend, not enforcing suspension.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. There is no general warehouse quota mechanism in Snowflake configured through ALTER WAREHOUSE that provides this budget-style threshold notification behavior. Candidates may choose this if they assume warehouses support a direct built-in quota property, but Snowflake uses features such as budgets and resource monitors instead.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Budgets are not limited to database object costs. This option reflects a misunderstanding of budget scope. In practice, budgets are used to monitor costs for supported Snowflake objects, including warehouses, making this ETL warehouse scenario an appropriate use case.