Snowflake Certification Cheat Sheet; Questions and
Answers 100% Correct
What is Snowflake? (key features) Correct Ans-Analytic data warehouse
SaaS offering
- No hardware/installation/patching
- No ongoing maintenance/tuning
- Can't run privately (on-prem/hosted)
Runs completely in the Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Has its own VPC
Decoupled compute and storage (scaled compute does not need scaled storage)
Snowflake Pricing (what determines unit cost, pricing model, editions features) Correct
Ans-Unit costs for Credits and data storage determined by Region (not Cloud platform)
Pricing model = on-demand or discounted upfront
, Snowflake Certification Cheat Sheet; Questions and
Answers 100% Correct
Editions:
- Enterprise (or greater) => 90 days time-travel (default is 1 day) + materialized view + multi-
cluster warehouse
- Business Critical => more security (HIPAA, SOC 1&2, PCI DSS)
- VPS Edition => own cloud service layer (not shared with accounts)
Snowflake Regions - Is multi-region account supported? Correct Ans-No multi-region
accounts supported
- Each account can only be in one region
Multiple regions supported for each cloud provider
- AWS: 11 regions (US, EU, Asia-Pacific)
- Azure: 8 regions (US, EU, Asia-Pacific)
- GCP: 3 regions (US, EU)
Options to Connect to Snowflake Correct Ans-Web-based UI
, Snowflake Certification Cheat Sheet; Questions and
Answers 100% Correct
Command-Line client (SnowSQL)
ODBC, JDBC (must download driver)
Native connectors (Python, Spark, Kafka)
Third-Party connectors (e.g., Matillion)
Other (Node.js, .Net)
Connect URL Pattern Correct Ans-
https://<account_name>.<region>[.provider].snowflakecomputing.com
example for AWS:
https://pp12345.ap-southeast-2.snowflakecomputing.com
, Snowflake Certification Cheat Sheet; Questions and
Answers 100% Correct
Snowflake Architecture Overview Correct Ans-Hybrid of shared-disk db and shared-
nothing db
- Uses central data repo for persisted storage - all compute nodes have data access
- Uses MPP clusters to process queries - each node stores a portion of the data locally
Snowflake Architecture - 3 main Layers Correct Ans-Storage Layer
Query Processing
Cloud Services
Snowflake Architecture - Storage Layer Correct Ans-All data stored as internal, optimized,
compressed columnar format (micro-partitions represents logical structure of table)
Can't access data directly, only through Snowflake
Answers 100% Correct
What is Snowflake? (key features) Correct Ans-Analytic data warehouse
SaaS offering
- No hardware/installation/patching
- No ongoing maintenance/tuning
- Can't run privately (on-prem/hosted)
Runs completely in the Cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Has its own VPC
Decoupled compute and storage (scaled compute does not need scaled storage)
Snowflake Pricing (what determines unit cost, pricing model, editions features) Correct
Ans-Unit costs for Credits and data storage determined by Region (not Cloud platform)
Pricing model = on-demand or discounted upfront
, Snowflake Certification Cheat Sheet; Questions and
Answers 100% Correct
Editions:
- Enterprise (or greater) => 90 days time-travel (default is 1 day) + materialized view + multi-
cluster warehouse
- Business Critical => more security (HIPAA, SOC 1&2, PCI DSS)
- VPS Edition => own cloud service layer (not shared with accounts)
Snowflake Regions - Is multi-region account supported? Correct Ans-No multi-region
accounts supported
- Each account can only be in one region
Multiple regions supported for each cloud provider
- AWS: 11 regions (US, EU, Asia-Pacific)
- Azure: 8 regions (US, EU, Asia-Pacific)
- GCP: 3 regions (US, EU)
Options to Connect to Snowflake Correct Ans-Web-based UI
, Snowflake Certification Cheat Sheet; Questions and
Answers 100% Correct
Command-Line client (SnowSQL)
ODBC, JDBC (must download driver)
Native connectors (Python, Spark, Kafka)
Third-Party connectors (e.g., Matillion)
Other (Node.js, .Net)
Connect URL Pattern Correct Ans-
https://<account_name>.<region>[.provider].snowflakecomputing.com
example for AWS:
https://pp12345.ap-southeast-2.snowflakecomputing.com
, Snowflake Certification Cheat Sheet; Questions and
Answers 100% Correct
Snowflake Architecture Overview Correct Ans-Hybrid of shared-disk db and shared-
nothing db
- Uses central data repo for persisted storage - all compute nodes have data access
- Uses MPP clusters to process queries - each node stores a portion of the data locally
Snowflake Architecture - 3 main Layers Correct Ans-Storage Layer
Query Processing
Cloud Services
Snowflake Architecture - Storage Layer Correct Ans-All data stored as internal, optimized,
compressed columnar format (micro-partitions represents logical structure of table)
Can't access data directly, only through Snowflake
