SnowPro Specialty: Gen AI Question 79
Single answerCORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION parameterA financial services company uses Snowflake Cortex AI functions in an account hosted in a single Snowflake region. Their security team requires that prompts and responses stay within the account's region unless there is an explicit administrative decision to allow cross-region inference. During testing, developers find that some Cortex model calls are unavailable in their region and ask the account administrator for the safest way to preserve the policy while still understanding the control point. Which action best meets the requirement?
- A
Leave CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION disabled unless the administrator intentionally enables it, because this parameter controls whether Cortex can use cross-region processing when required for model inference.
- B
Enable CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION at the user level for developers, because cross-region inference is controlled per user rather than at the account level.
- C
Create a network policy that restricts outbound traffic to the local region, because Cortex model routing follows network policy settings instead of account parameters.
- D
Set CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION to TRUE on the warehouse used by Cortex queries, because cross-region inference is determined by the compute resource executing the SQL.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
This question tests practical governance of Snowflake Cortex model usage. The key idea is that CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION is the administrative parameter that determines whether Cortex can perform inference using cross-region processing when required. In regulated environments, the recommended approach is to keep this disabled unless there is a clear business and compliance decision to enable it. The distractors reflect common misunderstandings: treating the setting as user-scoped, assuming network policy controls managed inference routing, or thinking warehouse settings determine Cortex cross-region behavior. Candidates should recognize that this is an account-level governance decision aligned with Snowflake documentation for Cortex cross-region configuration and administrative best practices.
- A. Correct.
Correct. CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION is the account-level control used to allow or prevent Snowflake Cortex from using cross-region processing when needed for supported model inference. If the organization's policy is to keep processing in-region unless an administrator explicitly approves otherwise, the safest action is to leave this parameter disabled and only enable it through an intentional administrative decision.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. This is a common misconception based on role- or user-scoped settings used elsewhere in Snowflake. CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION is not something developers typically enable per user to override account policy. The scenario asks for the safest governance control, which is handled centrally at the account level.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Network policies control client connectivity patterns, such as which IP addresses can connect, but they do not govern how Snowflake Cortex routes managed model inference behind the service. This option confuses network access controls with Cortex service configuration.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Warehouses provide compute for many SQL operations, but the CORTEX_ENABLED_CROSS_REGION behavior is not configured at the warehouse level. Cortex inference routing is not enabled simply by changing a warehouse parameter.