SnowPro Associate: Platform Question 5
Single answer● Elastic storageA retail company loads 3 TB of historical sales data into Snowflake each month and keeps all history for trend analysis. During a cost review, the team notices that storage charges continue to increase even though their virtual warehouses are suspended most of the time. The data engineering lead asks why this is happening and whether they need to provision more storage capacity in advance as data grows. Which statement best explains Snowflake's elastic storage behavior in this scenario?
- A
Snowflake automatically scales storage capacity as data grows, and storage charges are based on the amount of data stored rather than on pre-allocated disk capacity.
- B
Snowflake storage capacity is tied to the size of the virtual warehouse, so increasing warehouse size is required before loading more historical data.
- C
Snowflake does not charge for stored data when virtual warehouses are suspended, because storage costs only apply while compute is running.
- D
Snowflake requires administrators to manually attach additional storage volumes once a database reaches its current limit.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
This scenario tests understanding of Snowflake's core architecture: storage and compute are decoupled. Snowflake uses centrally managed, elastic storage, so organizations can continue loading and retaining data without provisioning storage hardware or assigning storage quotas to warehouses. Costs for storage increase as more data is stored, independent of whether virtual warehouses are running. Suspending a warehouse reduces compute charges only; it does not eliminate charges for persisted data. This aligns with Snowflake documentation and best practices describing separate billing and scaling for storage and compute.
- A. Correct.
Correct. Snowflake separates storage from compute and provides elastic storage managed by the platform. Customers do not pre-provision disks or increase warehouse size to accommodate more stored data. As more data is loaded and retained, storage usage and corresponding storage charges increase based on the data stored in Snowflake.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Virtual warehouses provide compute resources for processing queries, loading, and transformations, but they do not determine storage capacity. This option reflects a common misconception carried over from traditional systems where storage and compute scale together.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Suspending virtual warehouses stops compute charges, but storage charges continue for data that remains stored in Snowflake. This is why the company still sees increasing costs as it retains more historical data over time.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Snowflake manages storage infrastructure automatically. Users do not manually attach disks or provision storage volumes. The platform's elastic storage model is designed to remove that administrative burden.