Introduction: What is Snowflake’s Cost Governance?

 

Snowflake cost governance refers to the process of managing and optimizing the costs associated with using the Snowflake cloud data platform. This involves monitoring and analyzing usage metrics to identify areas where costs can be reduced, as well as implementing strategies to control spending and prevent unexpected expenses. Snowflake offers various tools and features for cost governance, including resource groups, budgets, and usage views. However, some users may still choose to use third-party optimization tools to fully optimize their Snowflake accounts and save money.

 

Part 1: My Take on Snowflake’s Cost Governance

In this article, I’ll explain what you can do to manage costs on Snowflake as of July 2022. Although Snowflake has made significant progress in this area, it’s still recommended to use a comprehensive Snowflake cost optimization service like Snoptimizer™ or Nadalytics. This is due to the fact that Snowflake still generates most of its revenue from consumption-based services, and despite having impressive NPS scores, there are still many cost-related issues to be aware of. Before the Summit 2022 announcements, here’s a brief overview of what was available.

 

Before Snowflake Summit 2022, Cost Governance in Snowflake was honestly pretty weak. It only had the following GUI and optimization tools:

 

1. Daily Summary is available in Snowflake’s Standard Classic Console. This provided very limited information and was available ONLY to very limited ROLES!
2. Usage Views can be utilized in Snowsight – It shows more granularity of costs but there are problems with some default views and bugs. Again, by default, it is locked down to certain roles.
3. Third-Party Optimization Tools can help you view your information and make sense of it. Some are:
   1. Nadlytics
   2. Snoptimizer™
4. Third-Party “Reactive” Reporting Tools (from all the Snowflake Health Check Consulting Engagements I’ve done, this was the most common set of tools for Cost Governance on Snowflake).
   1. Sigma Computing Cost and Usage
   2. Looker Snowflake Cost and Usage
   3. Tableau Snowflake Cost and Usage
   4. Many other smaller fragmented brands with “reactive” reporting around costs. However, the problem with reactive reporting is that if something goes awry like a long-running query where there is NO Resource monitor OR the resource monitor is ONLY set to kick in when the query ends which by default could be 48 hours… If this happens $1000s or $10,000+ of dollars can be spent within a day easily with no true Data to Value provided!

After Snowflake Summit 2022, these major Cost Governance announcements were provided:

 

#1. A New Resource Groups concept announced where you can combine all sorts of Snowflake data objects to monitor their resource usage. [This is huge since Resource Monitors were pretty primitive]
#2. Concept of Budgets that you can track against. [both Resource Groups and Budgets are available in Private Preview in the next]
#3. More Usage Metrics are being made available as well for SnowPros like us to use or Monitoring tools. This is important since many enterprise businesses were looking for this.

Conclusion:

If you’re interested in staying up-to-date with our latest updates, be sure to check our website regularly for more information. Looking to reduce costs and optimize your Snowflake Account to save money? Try our Snoptimizer™ Assessment for Free and see the results for yourself. We are confident that our assessment will provide you with valuable insights and recommendations to improve your Snowflake usage and help you save money in the process.