ADA-C01 Question 421
Select 3Manage costs for serverless and AI featuresA Snowflake administrator notices a sharp increase in monthly usage after several teams began using Cortex AI functions in ad hoc analyst queries and enabling serverless task workloads for ELT orchestration. Leadership wants better cost control without broadly disabling these capabilities. Which TWO actions should the administrator take to most directly improve cost governance for both serverless and AI-related usage?
- A
Create custom budgets and alerts for the relevant objects or account scope, and monitor usage through ACCOUNT_USAGE views to identify the teams and workloads driving spend.
- B
Configure resource monitors on the account so they suspend Cortex AI functions and all serverless task executions automatically when a credit threshold is reached.
- C
Tag AI-heavy schemas, tasks, or related objects and use cost attribution reporting with tags to allocate and review spend by team or use case.
- D
Move all serverless tasks to larger user-managed warehouses, because user-managed warehouses are always cheaper than serverless compute for recurring pipelines.
- E
Review serverless task sizing behavior and task schedules, then reduce unnecessary execution frequency or overlap for low-priority pipelines.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C, E
Explanation
The best answer focuses on governance and optimization rather than blanket disablement. For cost management of serverless and AI features, Snowflake best practices emphasize visibility, attribution, and workload tuning. Budgets and alerts help administrators detect and respond to rising spend. ACCOUNT_USAGE views provide the data needed to analyze consumption patterns. Tags improve cost allocation across teams, projects, or environments, which is especially important when AI functions and serverless features are adopted broadly. For serverless tasks specifically, reviewing task schedules, overlap, and execution patterns is a practical way to reduce waste. By contrast, resource monitors are designed for virtual warehouses and do not serve as a universal control for all serverless or AI-related consumption. Also, replacing serverless with user-managed warehouses is not automatically cost-saving; the right choice depends on workload behavior and operational tradeoffs. Relevant Snowflake documentation areas include Budgets, Cost Management and Billing, ACCOUNT_USAGE views, Object Tagging for governance, and Tasks including serverless task behavior.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Budgets and alerts are appropriate governance tools for cost management, and Snowflake usage views in ACCOUNT_USAGE are used to analyze where credits are being consumed. This combination supports visibility and proactive notification without disabling the features outright. It is a practical first step when leadership wants tighter control over spend from serverless and AI-related workloads.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Resource monitors apply to virtual warehouses, not to all serverless compute or Cortex AI function usage. A common misconception is that resource monitors are universal account-wide credit governors. They do not directly suspend Snowflake-managed serverless features such as serverless tasks or AI function consumption in the same way they can suspend user-managed warehouses.
- C. Correct.
Correct. Tagging is a recommended governance pattern for cost attribution. By tagging objects associated with specific teams, environments, or projects, administrators can improve chargeback/showback reporting and identify which business units are responsible for serverless and AI costs. This is especially useful when multiple teams share the same account and leadership wants accountability rather than broad restrictions.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Moving to user-managed warehouses is not inherently cheaper. Cost efficiency depends on workload characteristics, concurrency, runtime, and administrative overhead. Serverless tasks can be more efficient for some intermittent or variable workloads. The statement uses an absolute claim that does not reflect Snowflake best practices.
- E. Correct.
Correct. Serverless task costs are influenced by how often tasks run and how much compute is needed to complete them. Reviewing schedule frequency, dependency chains, and overlapping executions is a direct and realistic optimization step. Reducing unnecessary runs for low-value workloads can materially lower spend while preserving business-critical pipelines.