Key Features
● Three Distinct Architecture Layers
● Decoupling of Elastic Storage and Elastic Compute. Elastic
Computed implemented using Virtual Warehouses
● Cloud Agnostic
● Data Cloud/ Data Exchange and Partner Network
● Cloud Partner Categories
● Truly self managed service
● Fully ACID compliant
● Zero Copy Cloning
● The Snowflake deployment extends across 3 availability zone in a
a region
Snowflake Editions
Each account in an organization has a specific edition
Standard
● Full unlimited access to all of Snowflake’s standard features
● Provides a strong balance between features, level of support and
cost
Enterprise
● Additional features designed specifically for the needs of large
scale organizations
● Extended time travel
● Periodic rekeying of encrypted data
● Object tagging
, ● Query acceleration, search optimization and materialized view
● Column and row level security
● Multi Clustering
● Audit User Access history through account_usage.access_history
view
Business Critical
● Formerly known as Enterprise for Sensitive Data (ESD)
● Support higher level of data protection using Customer Managed
Encryptions keys
● Support for highly sensitive data particularly PHI (Protected Health
Information) data that must comply with HIPAA and HITRUST CSF
regulations
● Additional support for database failover/failback and disaster
recovery
● As per HIPAA and HITRUST regulation, a signed business
associate agreement (BAA) must be signed between the
organization and Snowflake INC
● Support for PCI DSS, FedRAMP and IRAP
● AWS Private Link, Azure Private Link and Google Private Service
Connect support
● Support for customer managed encryption key using Tri Secret
Secure
Virtual Private Snowflake
● Provides the highest level of security
● Suited for financial institutions and other organizations that collect,
analyze and share highly sensitive data
● Complete separate Snowflake account completely isolated from
other Snowflake accounts
● VPS accounts do no share any resources outside of the VPS
account
, ● VPS account may choose to enable data sharing with non VPS
customers by contacting Snowflake Support. This is not enabled by
default
● Can use account identified that uses organization name and
account name
● Account locator uses a different format from those of other account
editions
Releases
Weekly release
● Full release that may include new features, feature enhancements,
fixes and behavior changes
● Weekly releases notes are published to the Snowflake Community
● Snowflake documentation is updated
● Any day of the week except fully releases are not typically released
on a Friday
● Patch release only include fixes
● Are deployed along with or after a full release
Behavior releases
● Behavior change is defined as a change to an existing behavior
● May affect customers existing code or workloads
● Each month apart from November and December
● Snowflake selects one of the weekly releases to release behavior
changes
● Typically this is the 3rd or the 4th week of the month
● Naming convention YYYY_NN. YYYY stands for the year, NN
stands for the sequential ordinal number for the release within the
year
● Consist of two periods; the test period and the opt-out period
● Three Distinct Architecture Layers
● Decoupling of Elastic Storage and Elastic Compute. Elastic
Computed implemented using Virtual Warehouses
● Cloud Agnostic
● Data Cloud/ Data Exchange and Partner Network
● Cloud Partner Categories
● Truly self managed service
● Fully ACID compliant
● Zero Copy Cloning
● The Snowflake deployment extends across 3 availability zone in a
a region
Snowflake Editions
Each account in an organization has a specific edition
Standard
● Full unlimited access to all of Snowflake’s standard features
● Provides a strong balance between features, level of support and
cost
Enterprise
● Additional features designed specifically for the needs of large
scale organizations
● Extended time travel
● Periodic rekeying of encrypted data
● Object tagging
, ● Query acceleration, search optimization and materialized view
● Column and row level security
● Multi Clustering
● Audit User Access history through account_usage.access_history
view
Business Critical
● Formerly known as Enterprise for Sensitive Data (ESD)
● Support higher level of data protection using Customer Managed
Encryptions keys
● Support for highly sensitive data particularly PHI (Protected Health
Information) data that must comply with HIPAA and HITRUST CSF
regulations
● Additional support for database failover/failback and disaster
recovery
● As per HIPAA and HITRUST regulation, a signed business
associate agreement (BAA) must be signed between the
organization and Snowflake INC
● Support for PCI DSS, FedRAMP and IRAP
● AWS Private Link, Azure Private Link and Google Private Service
Connect support
● Support for customer managed encryption key using Tri Secret
Secure
Virtual Private Snowflake
● Provides the highest level of security
● Suited for financial institutions and other organizations that collect,
analyze and share highly sensitive data
● Complete separate Snowflake account completely isolated from
other Snowflake accounts
● VPS accounts do no share any resources outside of the VPS
account
, ● VPS account may choose to enable data sharing with non VPS
customers by contacting Snowflake Support. This is not enabled by
default
● Can use account identified that uses organization name and
account name
● Account locator uses a different format from those of other account
editions
Releases
Weekly release
● Full release that may include new features, feature enhancements,
fixes and behavior changes
● Weekly releases notes are published to the Snowflake Community
● Snowflake documentation is updated
● Any day of the week except fully releases are not typically released
on a Friday
● Patch release only include fixes
● Are deployed along with or after a full release
Behavior releases
● Behavior change is defined as a change to an existing behavior
● May affect customers existing code or workloads
● Each month apart from November and December
● Snowflake selects one of the weekly releases to release behavior
changes
● Typically this is the 3rd or the 4th week of the month
● Naming convention YYYY_NN. YYYY stands for the year, NN
stands for the sequential ordinal number for the release within the
year
● Consist of two periods; the test period and the opt-out period
