ARA-C01 Question 71
Single answerFeatures of the different Snowflake editionsA financial services company is deploying a new Snowflake environment for regulated analytics workloads. The architecture team must satisfy three requirements: 1) enforce customer-managed encryption keys for stored data, 2) support replication and failover of critical data across regions for disaster recovery, and 3) allow business users to run ad hoc BI queries with a low-latency cache to improve dashboard responsiveness. The company wants to choose the lowest Snowflake edition that natively satisfies all of these requirements without relying on external tools. Which Snowflake edition should the architect recommend?
- A
Standard Edition
- B
Enterprise Edition
- C
Business Critical Edition
- D
Virtual Private Snowflake (VPS)
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: C
Explanation
The key discriminator in this scenario is the requirement for customer-managed encryption keys. In Snowflake, that maps to Tri-Secret Secure, which is available starting with Business Critical Edition, not Standard or Enterprise. Replication and failover are important disaster recovery capabilities available in Snowflake’s higher editions, but they are not enough by themselves to drive the edition choice here. The low-latency BI requirement points to performance-enhancing capabilities such as the Query Acceleration Service for eligible workloads, but the deciding factor remains the encryption requirement because the question asks for the lowest edition that satisfies all requirements together. From an architecture and cost-optimization perspective, Business Critical is therefore the best answer. This aligns with Snowflake documentation on edition-based features, especially advanced security features such as Tri-Secret Secure and edition availability for business continuity capabilities.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Standard Edition does not provide customer-managed encryption keys. It also does not include all of the advanced security and compliance capabilities required for regulated workloads. While some replication capabilities exist in higher-tier scenarios, Standard is not the lowest edition that satisfies all three listed requirements together.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Enterprise Edition adds important capabilities such as multi-cluster warehouses and increased security features compared to Standard, and it supports query acceleration-related performance features depending on service usage. However, it does not provide Tri-Secret Secure, which is the Snowflake capability that enables customer-managed encryption key support for data at rest. Therefore, it does not meet the encryption requirement.
- C. Correct.
Correct. Business Critical Edition is the lowest Snowflake edition that supports Tri-Secret Secure, which is required when the customer must use customer-managed encryption keys in addition to Snowflake-managed keys. It also supports replication and failover capabilities used for disaster recovery planning, and it includes services such as the Query Acceleration Service that can help improve performance for suitable ad hoc BI workloads. Because the question asks for the lowest edition that satisfies all requirements natively, Business Critical is the appropriate choice.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Virtual Private Snowflake provides an even stronger isolation model and is designed for organizations with the strictest security and isolation requirements. However, it is not the lowest edition that meets the stated needs. Since Business Critical already satisfies the requirements, recommending VPS would exceed the requirement and increase cost unnecessarily.