Snowflake Certification Practice Test

In a Snowflake environment, when clusters are provisioned but not actively used, they can still incur costs based on the underlying compute resources allocated to them. Snowflake operates on a pay-as-you-go model where users are charged for the compute time consumed. If a virtual warehouse (which represents a cluster of compute resources) is running, even if not actively processing queries, it is still considered "active," and costs will be incurred. It's essential to understand that Snowflake virtual warehouses can automatically suspend when they are inactive for a certain period, which can help minimize costs. However, the key point here is that as long as the clusters are maintained and not suspended, they will continue to generate charges based on the usage, even if they are not actively processing data. The other choices misrepresent the behavior of unused clusters. They are not automatically deleted, nor are they kept solely for backup purposes. Instead, they can run up costs unless effectively managed and suspended during periods of inactivity. Archiving is not applicable here since clusters are not archived but managed through active and inactive states based on utilization.