ADA-C01 Question 553
Select 2Implement best practices for backups in SnowflakeA financial services company stores critical transaction data in Snowflake and must improve its backup and recovery posture for accidental data loss, while also preparing for a regional outage scenario. The company currently relies only on Snowflake Time Travel with a 1-day retention period on standard tables. Which TWO actions represent Snowflake best practices for backup and recovery in this situation?
- A
Increase data protection by using permanent tables with appropriate Time Travel retention and rely on Fail-safe for disaster recovery of historical table data when needed
- B
Create regular database or schema clones and keep them indefinitely as the company’s primary long-term backup strategy
- C
Implement account replication and failover to a secondary region or cloud so business-critical databases can be recovered in a regional outage
- D
Unload critical data on a scheduled basis to external cloud storage to maintain an independent copy outside Snowflake for long-term backup requirements
- E
Enable search optimization service on critical tables so deleted data can be recovered more quickly after accidental drops
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: C, D
Explanation
The best answers are account replication/failover and scheduled unloads to external cloud storage. In Snowflake, Time Travel and Fail-safe provide important built-in data protection, but they are not a full backup strategy for all recovery objectives. Time Travel helps recover from accidental data changes within the retention period, while Fail-safe is a Snowflake-managed recovery mechanism after Time Travel expires and is not designed as a customer-operated backup or DR solution. For disaster recovery across regions or clouds, Snowflake best practice is to configure replication and failover for business-critical databases and other supported objects. For organizations that require an independent backup copy outside Snowflake, scheduled unloads to external storage are a common and practical approach. Cloning is useful operationally but should not be treated as a substitute for independent backups or cross-region DR. These recommendations align with Snowflake documentation on data protection, Time Travel, Fail-safe, replication, and business continuity/disaster recovery planning.
- A. Incorrect.
This is only partially aligned with best practices and is not the best answer for the stated requirements. Using permanent tables and appropriate Time Travel retention does improve protection against accidental changes, and Fail-safe provides an additional recovery window after Time Travel expires. However, Fail-safe is not intended to be used by customers as an operational backup or disaster recovery mechanism, and it does not address regional outage preparedness. Snowflake best practice is to treat Time Travel and Fail-safe as built-in data protection features, not as a complete backup strategy for business continuity.
- B. Incorrect.
This is incorrect. Zero-copy cloning is useful for creating point-in-time copies quickly for testing, validation, or short-term recovery workflows, but clones share underlying micro-partitions until changes occur and are not considered an independent long-term backup strategy. Keeping clones indefinitely can also complicate storage lifecycle and cost management. Cloning does not address cross-region disaster recovery unless combined with replication/failover capabilities.
- C. Correct.
This is correct. For regional outage or broader disaster recovery scenarios, Snowflake best practice is to use replication and failover/failover groups to a secondary region or cloud, depending on edition and configuration. This provides a recoverable copy of supported objects and supports business continuity beyond local logical recovery features like Time Travel.
- D. Correct.
This is correct. If the organization requires an independent backup copy outside Snowflake, regularly unloading critical data to external cloud storage is a practical best practice. This addresses requirements for long-term retention, additional control, or recovery independent of Snowflake account-level features. Many organizations combine Snowflake-native protection with externalized backups for defense in depth.
- E. Incorrect.
This is incorrect. Search optimization service improves selective query performance on supported access patterns. It has no role in backup, Time Travel, Fail-safe, replication, or recovery of dropped or corrupted data. This option reflects a performance feature being confused with a data protection capability.