Snowflake Administrator Certification Advanced Exam!!

The SnowPro Advanced: Administrator Certification Exam will test your knowledge of advanced concepts and your ability to apply comprehensive data cloud administrative principles using Snowflake and its components.

This certification will test your ability to :

• Manage and administer Snowflake accounts

• Manage and administer Snowflake data security and governance

• Manage and maintain database objects

• Manage and maintain virtual warehouses

• Perform database monitoring and tuning

• Perform data sharing and use the Snowflake Data Exchange and Data Marketplace

• Administer disaster recovery, backup, and data replication

Total Number of Questions: 65

Question Types: Multiple Select, Multiple Choice

Time Limit: 115 minutes

Prerequisites: SnowPro Core Certified

     Domain                                                                                               Percentage Range of Exam                                               

1.0 Snowflake Security, Role-based Access Control (RBAC),           25-30%

and User Administration

2.0 Account Management and Data Governance                                 25-30%

3.0 Performance Monitoring and Tuning                                                 20-25%

4.0 Data Sharing, Data Exchange, and Data Marketplace                  10-15%

5.0 Disaster Recovery, Backup, and Data Replication                         10-15%

This Study Course designed to cover all the essentials Domains area & their components.

1.0 Domain: Snowflake Security, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), and User Administration

1.1 Set up and manage Snowflake authentication.

• Establish and implement federated authentication and Single Sign-on (SSO)

• Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

• Perform key pair authentication and key pair rotation

• Configure and use OAuth

1.2 Set up and manage network and private connectivity.

• Establish network policies

  • Establish private connectivity to Snowflake internal stages

  • Establish private connectivity to the Snowflake service

• Use IP address whitelists/allowed lists and blocked lists for access using network access policies

1.3 Set up and manage security administration and authorization.

• Use and monitor SCIM

• Prevent data exfiltration with PREVENT_UNLOAD_TO_INLINE_URL/REQUIRE_STORAGE_INTEGRATION _FOR_STAGE_CREATION

• Manage service accounts, API integration, and automated authentication (e.g., key pair)

1.4 Given a set of business requirements, establish access control architecture.

• Access control framework

• Securable objects

• Describe the uses for, and hierarchy of, system-defined roles (e.g., ORGADMIN, ACCOUNTADMIN, SYSADMIN, SECURITYADMIN, and USERADMIN).

• Use an enforcement model

• Demonstrate how to grant access to specific objects within a database that requires privilege inheritance

1.5 Given a scenario, create and manage access control.

• List and use the different privileges available for each object type in Snowflake

• Implement custom security roles and users (e.g., include related SHOW commands)

• Audit user activity history and query activity history across a Snowflake account

1.6 Given a scenario, configure access controls.

• Use system-defined roles

• Create custom roles

• Implement inheritance and nesting of system-defined roles

• Align usage of object access with business functions

• Describe cloned objects and their impact on granted privileges

• Designate additional administrators in Snowflake

• View granted privileges to users, roles, and/or on objects

• Implement and manage future grants, including restrictions and limitations

• Evaluate the various scenarios using warehouse grants (e.g., USAGE, OPERATE, MODIFY, MONITOR)

• Implement and manage managed access schemas

• Manage account-level permissions

2.0 Domain: Account Management and Data Governance

2.1 Manage organizations and accounts.

• Describe the benefits of an organization

• Describe organizational tasks

• Understand account tasks

2.2 Manage organization security and access control.

• Follow best practice when using the ORGADMIN role

• Compare the differences between ORGADMIN and ACCOUNTADMIN roles

2.3 Implement and manage data governance in Snowflake.

• Mask column data in Snowflake

• Implement and manage row access policies

• Perform auditing of access history

• Implement and manage tagging in Snowflake

2.4 Given a scenario, manage account identifiers.

• Describe the differences between account names and account locators

• Identify when a given account identifier needs to be used

• Use region groups

2.5 Given a scenario, manage databases, tables, and views.

• Implement Snowflake table structures

• Establish and use temporary and transient tables

• Establish and use external tables

• Implement and manage views, secure views, and materialized views

• Outline table design considerations

• Outline the use cases when cloning is beneficial

• Outline data storage and data retention considerations

2.6 Perform queries in Snowflake.

• Use Snowflake sequences

• Use persisted query results

• Demonstrate the ability to cancel statements for both a single user as well as for other users

• Use query history filters including client-generated queries and queries executed by user tasks

2.7 Given a scenario, stage data in Snowflake.

• Stage data files from a local file system

• Create, manage, and maintain Snowflake internal and external stages

2.8 Given a scenario, manage database streams and tasks.

• Outline database tasks and associated use cases

• Outline database streams and associated use cases

3.0 Domain: Performance Monitoring and Tuning

3.1 Given business requirements, design, manage, and maintain virtual warehouses.

• Outline the impact on billing, data loading, and query processing based on warehouse sizes

• Given a scenario, manage warehouse usage in sessions and size the warehouse accordingly

• Given a scenario, manage a multi-cluster warehouse

3.2 Monitor Snowflake performance.

• Evaluate and interpret query profiles to improve performance

  • Describe the components of the query profilers

  • Compare compile versus runtime optimizations

  • Identify/create efficient queries

  • Troubleshoot common errors in the query profiler

  • If data spilling is present, describe its impact and remediation tactics

  • If data pruning is present, describe its impact and remediation tactics

  • Describe the various timeout parameters

• Use an explain plan

• Compare and contrast different caching techniques available in Snowflake and the impact of caching on performance

• Implement performance improvements

3.3 Manage DML locking and concurrency in Snowflake.

• Follow best practices for DML locking and concurrency

• Monitor transaction activity

3.4 Given a scenario, implement resource monitors.

• Create, manage, modify, and remove resource monitors based on use cases and business requirements

3.5 Interpret and make recommendations for data clustering.

• Configure and maintain cluster keys

• Describe micro-partitions, their benefits, and their impact

• Retrieve clustering information

3.6 Manage costs and pricing.

• Manage organization costs

• Forecast and monitor costs and pricing

• Describe the use cases for the account_usage and information_schema

• Monitor and calculate data storage usage/credit, data transfer costs, data replication costs, and/or warehouse usage/credits

• Describe how Snowflake credits are consumed by service layer activities (e.g., Snowpipe, materialized views, automatic clustering, etc.)

• Apply techniques for reducing costs

4.0 Domain: Data Sharing, Data Exchange, and Data Marketplace

4.1 Manage and implement data sharing.

• Given a scenario, implement sharing solutions and outline any business impacts

• Manage data providers and consumers

4.2 Use the Snowflake Data Exchange.

• Manage administration and membership

• Outline the process of becoming a data provider

• Manage data listings

4.3 Use the Snowflake Data Marketplace.

• Access Snowflake Data Marketplace to browse listings

• Request that new data or a data provider be added to the Snowflake Data Marketplace

• Manage listing requests

• Manage data listings

5.0 Domain: Disaster Recovery, Backup, and Data Replication

5.1 Manage data replication.

• Describe the difference between primary and secondary databases

• Replicate database objects

• Manage access controls with respect to replication

• Perform database replication and encryption

• Enable scheduled replication

• Outline the database replication processes with respect to the different Snowflake editions

• Describe the limitations of database replications

• Outline the billing implications for database replication

• Outline database replications considerations for:

• Perform replication across multiple accounts

• Plan and implement disaster recovery and business continuity plans

• Implement backup best practices in Snowflake

5.2 Given a scenario, manage Snowflake Time Travel and Fail-safe.

• Retention periods

• Query historical data

• Restore dropped objects

• Snowflake edition implications

• Storage costs