Resource Monitors and Credit Calculation

Snowflake Management, Governance & Collaboration

Emily Melhuish

Technical Curriculum Developer, Snowflake

The Cost Problem

• Analysts run queries across multiple warehouses daily
• One expensive ad-hoc query left running over a long weekend
• Credits accumulating well beyond what any single job should cost
• Resource monitors are Snowflake's answer

• Expensive queries increase the Snowflake bill

• Resource monitor = Snowflake's Answer

What is a Snowflake Credit?

• The unit of compute consumption
• One credit = one hour of a Standard Gen 1 X-Small warehouse running continuously
• Credit consumption depends on warehouse type and size
• Credits only consumed while a warehouse is actively running

Credit Consumption by Warehouse Size

 

¹ https://www.snowflake.com/legal-files/CreditConsumptionTable.pdf

Important Caveats on Billing

• Virtual warehouse usage is billed per second, with a one-minute minimum
• Cloud services layer: authentication, query optimization, metadata
• Cloud services credits only charged above 10% of daily warehouse compute
• Below that threshold, cloud services are effectively included

What is a Resource Monitor?

• Watches credit consumption against a defined quota
• Attach to a warehouse or to the entire account
• Tracks progress as the warehouse consumes credits
• Takes action when consumption hits a threshold percentage

Resource Monitor Actions

Account vs Warehouse Level Monitors

• Account-level: tracks total consumption across every warehouse
• Single guardrail for the overall budget

• Warehouse-level: scoped to one warehouse, each team gets their own quota
• Both levels can coexist - hard ceiling plus per-team limits

Let's practice!

Snowflake Management, Governance & Collaboration