ADA-C01 Question 517
Single answerEnable scheduled replicationA global company uses Snowflake accounts in AWS us-east-1 (primary) and AWS eu-west-1 (secondary). The platform team has already enabled replication for the account and created a failover group that includes several production databases and account objects. They now need the secondary account to receive updates automatically every 30 minutes, without requiring an administrator to run manual refresh commands. Which action should the administrator take to meet this requirement?
- A
Alter the failover group to set a replication schedule, for example using an interval such as 30 minutes.
- B
Create a task in the primary account that runs ALTER DATABASE ... REFRESH every 30 minutes for each replicated database.
- C
Create a stream on the failover group and use a task in the secondary account to consume changes every 30 minutes.
- D
Enable auto-ingest on the failover group so metadata changes are pushed to the target account every 30 minutes.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
To enable automatic, recurring replication, administrators configure a replication schedule on the replication group or failover group rather than building their own scheduler with tasks. In this scenario, because the company is replicating both databases and account objects, a failover group is the appropriate replication object, and the schedule must be attached to that failover group. This is consistent with Snowflake best practices: use native scheduled replication for business continuity and disaster recovery workflows instead of custom SQL automation. Distractors in this question reflect common misconceptions, such as confusing replication with streams/tasks for data processing or auto-ingest for Snowpipe. See Snowflake documentation on failover groups, replication groups, and scheduled replication using CREATE/ALTER FAILOVER GROUP and replication scheduling syntax.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Scheduled replication for objects managed through a failover group is configured on the failover group itself by setting a replication schedule. This allows Snowflake to automatically refresh the replicated objects at the defined cadence, such as every 30 minutes, without custom orchestration.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Using tasks to issue manual refresh commands is not the correct approach for enabling scheduled replication of a failover group. In addition, the option refers to ALTER DATABASE ... REFRESH for each database, but the scenario states that replication is managed through a failover group that can include both databases and account objects. Scheduling should be defined at the failover group level rather than implemented as custom task logic.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Streams track table change data for DML processing and are unrelated to replication scheduling for databases or failover groups. A failover group does not use streams to propagate account or database metadata between accounts.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Auto-ingest is associated with Snowpipe and file ingestion workflows, not cross-region or cross-account replication. It does not apply to failover groups and cannot be used to schedule replication refreshes.