ARA-C01 Question 17
Select 2List the benefits and limitations of one Snowflake account as compared to multiple Snowflake accounts.A global enterprise is redesigning its Snowflake environment. Today, all business units, environments (dev/test/prod), and regional teams operate in a single Snowflake account using separate roles, warehouses, and databases. Security leadership is concerned about administrative blast radius and wants stronger isolation for production and regulated workloads. At the same time, the data platform team wants to minimize operational overhead and keep cross-team data sharing simple. Which TWO statements should the architect present as accurate trade-offs when comparing one Snowflake account to multiple Snowflake accounts?
- A
A single Snowflake account can reduce administrative overhead and simplify direct access to shared objects, but it provides weaker isolation boundaries than using multiple accounts.
- B
Using multiple Snowflake accounts eliminates the need to manage role-based access control because account boundaries replace object privileges.
- C
Multiple Snowflake accounts can improve isolation for security, governance, and workload separation, but cross-account data sharing and policy administration may become more complex than in a single account.
- D
A single Snowflake account is required if the company wants to separate compute resources for different business units.
- E
Multiple Snowflake accounts are the only way to support separate development, test, and production environments in Snowflake.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C
Explanation
When choosing between one Snowflake account and multiple Snowflake accounts, architects must balance simplicity against isolation. A single account generally reduces operational overhead, centralizes administration, and makes collaboration easier because teams can access shared objects through standard grants. However, it increases the potential administrative blast radius and relies on logical separation through RBAC and object design. Multiple accounts provide stronger isolation boundaries for security, compliance, regional separation, and environment segregation, but they add complexity for identity, governance consistency, and cross-account data access. Snowflake best practices commonly position this as an architectural trade-off rather than a one-size-fits-all rule: use single-account designs for simplicity when logical separation is sufficient, and use multiple accounts when stronger isolation, separate administration, or compliance boundaries are required. Relevant Snowflake documentation areas include account strategy, RBAC and access control, secure data sharing, organization/account management, and replication/business continuity guidance.
- A. Correct.
Correct. A single account often simplifies administration because users, roles, databases, warehouses, and governance objects are managed in one place. It also makes access to data across teams easier because objects can be granted directly without cross-account sharing patterns. However, the trade-off is that isolation is primarily logical within the same account. While Snowflake RBAC and object-level controls are strong, a single account does not provide the same account-level administrative separation or blast-radius reduction as multiple accounts.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Multiple accounts do not remove the need for RBAC. Each Snowflake account still requires roles, grants, and object privilege management. Account boundaries add a layer of separation, but they do not replace least-privilege design within each account. This option reflects a common misconception that account isolation alone is sufficient for access control.
- C. Correct.
Correct. Multiple accounts are commonly used to separate environments, business units, or regulated workloads because they provide stronger administrative and governance isolation. They can reduce risk from misconfiguration and separate billing or operational domains. The trade-off is added complexity: data sharing between accounts may require secure data sharing, replication/failover planning, duplicated governance setup, and separate administration of users, roles, and policies depending on the identity model.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Separate compute resources do not require multiple accounts. In a single account, different virtual warehouses can be assigned to different teams or workloads, providing compute isolation and independent scaling. Multiple accounts may be chosen for broader isolation reasons, but they are not required just to separate compute.
- E. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Separate dev, test, and prod environments can be implemented either within one account or across multiple accounts. A single account can separate environments using distinct databases, schemas, roles, and warehouses. Multiple accounts are often preferred when stronger isolation is needed, but they are not the only supported approach.