ARA-C01 Question 21
Select 3Key considerations and constraints when defining an account strategyA global enterprise is designing its Snowflake account strategy for three business units: Finance, R&D, and Customer Analytics. Finance data contains highly restricted information and must be administered by a separate security team. R&D frequently enables preview features and runs experimental workloads that should not affect production governance. Customer Analytics must share curated data products externally with partners in multiple regions. The company wants to minimize administrative overhead where possible, but it must maintain strong isolation where required. Which TWO factors should most strongly drive the decision to create separate Snowflake accounts instead of using databases and roles within a single account?
- A
Different business units require independent account-level administration, including separate security governance and account parameters
- B
The company wants to organize schemas by department so object names are easier to understand
- C
Some workloads need isolation for feature enablement, account-level settings, and operational blast radius
- D
Separate virtual warehouses cannot be created inside a single Snowflake account, so each workload needs its own account
- E
External sharing across regions requires independent replication and failover planning that may influence account boundaries
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, C, E
Explanation
The best answer focuses on true account-boundary considerations rather than logical organization. In Snowflake, architects typically prefer fewer accounts when possible to reduce administrative overhead, but separate accounts are justified when there are strong requirements for independent administration, security ownership, account-level configuration, workload isolation, or region/business continuity design. Option 1 is correct because account administrators, security policies, and certain settings are managed at the account scope, so separate governance teams are a classic driver for multiple accounts. Option 3 is correct because preview-feature testing and experimental workloads are common reasons to isolate environments and reduce operational blast radius. Option 5 is also correct because cross-region sharing, replication, and failover planning can shape account boundaries, especially in global deployments. Options 2 and 4 are incorrect because they confuse logical organization and warehouse isolation with account strategy; both are normally handled within a single account using databases, schemas, roles, and multiple virtual warehouses. These principles align with Snowflake architectural best practices around using accounts for hard administrative or regional boundaries, while using in-account constructs for most logical segmentation.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Account strategy is strongly influenced by whether teams need independent administration and governance at the account level. Separate accounts are appropriate when there are distinct security administrators, different account parameters, or business separation requirements that cannot be cleanly enforced only with roles and database-level controls inside one account.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Naming convenience or departmental organization alone is not a strong reason to create separate accounts. Snowflake databases, schemas, roles, tags, and resource monitors can usually provide sufficient logical separation for organizational clarity without adding the operational complexity of multiple accounts.
- C. Correct.
Correct. Separate accounts are often justified when workloads require isolation for account-level feature enablement, testing of preview capabilities, or reduction of operational blast radius. This is especially relevant when one group wants to experiment with settings or features that should not impact production governance or change-management policies in another environment.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A single Snowflake account can contain multiple virtual warehouses, each sized and configured for different workloads. Warehouse isolation is one of the primary mechanisms for separating compute consumption within an account, so this is a common misconception.
- E. Correct.
Correct. Cross-region data sharing, business continuity, and replication/failover requirements can affect account strategy. If Customer Analytics must distribute curated products across regions and the enterprise is planning replication or failover topologies, those requirements can influence whether dedicated accounts are preferable for that line of business.