Section 1.1 - SnowPro Core Certification Study Guide
Tags: cloud, snowflake, examprep, cloudskills
Published: 2022-04-24 13:39:01

**This series is intended to be a personal study guide. Information may not be comprehensive or accurate. I am sharing it in case others find it useful. Please feel free to comment if any information is inaccurate.**

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**<u>1.1 Explain how to manage Snowflake accounts</u>**

[Managing Your Snowflake Account](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide-admin.html)

- _[Account usage](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/account-usage.html#)_
     - ACCOUNT_USAGE and READER_ACCOUNT_USAGE schemas provide object metadata and historical usage data about the account and all reader accounts associated with it
     - ACCOUNT_USAGE
          - In general, these mirror corresponding views/functions in the information schema, with the following [differences](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/account-usage.html#differences-between-account-usage-and-information-schema):
          - AU shows dropped objects, IS does not
          - AU has a latency of 45 min to 3 hrs, IS has no latency
          - AU retains historical usage for 1 year, IS for 7 days to 6 months
          - [Account Usage views](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/account-usage.html#account-usage-views)
     - [READER_ACCOUNT_USAGE views](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/account-usage.html#reader-account-usage-views) (estimated latency)
          - LOGIN_HISTORY (2 hrs)
          - QUERY_HISTORY (45 min)
          - RESOURCE_MONITORS (2 hrs)
          - STORAGE_USAGE (2 hrs)
          - WAREHOUSE_METERING_HISTORY (3 hrs)
          
- _[Information schema](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/info-schema.html)_
     - System-defined views and table functions that provide metadata about account objects
     - Based on SQL-92 ANSI, but with additional views and functions specific to Snowflake
          - ANSI uses 'catalog' to refer to databases, Snowflake does the same to stay compatible
     - Snowflake automatically creates INFORMATION_SCHEMA in every database
     - The schema contains the following:
          - Views for all objects in the database
          - Views for account-level objects
          - Table functions for historical and usage data across account
     - INFORMATION_SCHEMA is read-only
     - Queries on INFORMATION_SCHEMA do not guarantee consistency with concurrent [DDL](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/sql-ddl-summary.html) (objects created during the execution of the query may or may not appear)
     - Output depends on privileges of user's current role
     - Views are optimized to return small subsets of data, use filtering whenever possible

- [Usage and Billing](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/admin-usage-billing.html)
     - Costs are based on usage of stored data, virtual warehouses, and cloud services
     - [Data storage](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/credits.html#data-storage-usage)
          - Usage for data storage is calculated on the daily average amount of data (bytes) in:
               - Staging
               - Database tables
               - Fail-safes
               - Clones of database tables
          - Monthly cost is based on a flat rate per terabyte, type of account, and region
     - [Virtual warehouses (compute)](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/credits.html#virtual-warehouse-credit-usage)
          - Usage for virtual warehouses (compute) is calculated based on Snowflake credits consumed for:
               - Executing queries
               - Loading/unloading data
               - Performing other [DML](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/sql-dml.html#) operations
          - Credits are charged based on number of VWs, their size, and how long they run
          - VWs come in ten sizes, each twice the power and cost of the previous
          - VWs are billed only when running, not when suspended
          - Credits are billed per second with a 60s minimum
     - [Cloud services ](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/credits.html#cloud-services-credit-usage)  
          - Usage for cloud services is charged only if the daily consumption of cloud services is greater than 10% of the daily usage of compute

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