Snowflake Production Checklist

Overview

Complete checklist for deploying Snowflake data pipelines and integrations to production.

Prerequisites

• Staging environment validated
• Production Snowflake account configured
• Resource monitors in place
• Monitoring infrastructure ready

Pre-Deployment Checklist

Authentication & Secrets

• Service accounts use key pair auth (not password)
• Private keys stored in secret manager (not files/env vars)
• Key rotation procedure documented and tested
• Network policy applied to production account
• Connection parameters use production account identifier

Warehouse Configuration

• Production warehouses created with appropriate sizing
• Auto-suspend configured (60-300s based on workload)
• Auto-resume enabled
• Resource monitors with credit quotas and alerts
• Separate warehouses for ETL, analytics, and dashboard workloads

-- Production warehouse setup
CREATE WAREHOUSE IF NOT EXISTS PROD_ETL_WH
  WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'LARGE'
  AUTO_SUSPEND = 120
  AUTO_RESUME = TRUE;

CREATE WAREHOUSE IF NOT EXISTS PROD_ANALYTICS_WH
  WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'MEDIUM'
  MIN_CLUSTER_COUNT = 1
  MAX_CLUSTER_COUNT = 3
  SCALING_POLICY = 'STANDARD'
  AUTO_SUSPEND = 300
  AUTO_RESUME = TRUE;

-- Resource monitor with alerts
CREATE OR REPLACE RESOURCE MONITOR prod_monitor
  WITH CREDIT_QUOTA = 1000
  FREQUENCY = MONTHLY
  START_TIMESTAMP = IMMEDIATELY
  TRIGGERS
    ON 75 PERCENT DO NOTIFY
    ON 90 PERCENT DO NOTIFY
    ON 100 PERCENT DO SUSPEND
    ON 110 PERCENT DO SUSPEND_IMMEDIATE;

ALTER WAREHOUSE PROD_ETL_WH SET RESOURCE_MONITOR = prod_monitor;
ALTER WAREHOUSE PROD_ANALYTICS_WH SET RESOURCE_MONITOR = prod_monitor;

Data Pipeline Readiness

• All tasks resumed and running on schedule
• Streams not stale (check with SHOW STREAMS)
• Snowpipe notifications configured and verified
• COPY INTO error handling set (ON_ERROR = 'CONTINUE' or 'SKIP_FILE')
• Data retention set appropriately (DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS)

Query & Performance

• Critical queries tested at production data volume
• Clustering keys set on large tables (>1TB)
• Statement timeout configured per warehouse
• Result caching enabled (USE_CACHED_RESULT = TRUE)

-- Set statement timeout for production
ALTER WAREHOUSE PROD_ETL_WH SET STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_IN_SECONDS = 3600;
ALTER WAREHOUSE PROD_ANALYTICS_WH SET STATEMENT_TIMEOUT_IN_SECONDS = 600;

-- Enable query result caching (default is ON)
ALTER ACCOUNT SET USE_CACHED_RESULT = TRUE;

Access Control

• RBAC hierarchy follows Snowflake best practices
• No users have ACCOUNTADMIN as default role
• Service accounts have minimal required privileges
• Object ownership assigned to functional roles

-- Verify no one defaults to ACCOUNTADMIN
SELECT name, default_role
FROM SNOWFLAKE.ACCOUNT_USAGE.USERS
WHERE default_role = 'ACCOUNTADMIN' AND disabled = 'false';

Monitoring & Alerting

• Query failure alerts configured
• Warehouse credit consumption dashboards
• Task failure notifications
• Login failure monitoring

-- Create alert for task failures (Snowflake Alerts feature)
CREATE OR REPLACE ALERT task_failure_alert
  WAREHOUSE = PROD_ANALYTICS_WH
  SCHEDULE = '5 MINUTE'
  IF (EXISTS (
    SELECT *
    FROM TABLE(INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TASK_HISTORY(
      SCHEDULED_TIME_RANGE_START => DATEADD(minutes, -10, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP())
    ))
    WHERE state = 'FAILED'
  ))
  THEN
    CALL SYSTEM$SEND_EMAIL(
      'prod_notifications',
      'oncall@company.com',
      'Snowflake Task Failure',
      'One or more tasks failed in the last 10 minutes. Check TASK_HISTORY.'
    );

ALTER ALERT task_failure_alert RESUME;

Disaster Recovery

• Time Travel retention set (Enterprise: up to 90 days)
• Database replication configured for critical databases
• Failover tested to secondary account/region
• Backup procedure documented

-- Enable 14-day Time Travel on production tables
ALTER TABLE prod_db.core.orders SET DATA_RETENTION_TIME_IN_DAYS = 14;

-- Enable database replication
ALTER DATABASE prod_db ENABLE REPLICATION TO ACCOUNTS myorg.secondary_account;

Health Check Query

-- Run this before and after deployment
SELECT 'Warehouses' AS check_type,
       COUNT(*) AS count,
       COUNT_IF(state = 'STARTED') AS active
FROM TABLE(INFORMATION_SCHEMA.WAREHOUSES())
UNION ALL
SELECT 'Tasks', COUNT(*), COUNT_IF(state = 'started')
FROM TABLE(INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TASKS())
UNION ALL
SELECT 'Streams', COUNT(*), COUNT_IF(stale = FALSE)
FROM TABLE(INFORMATION_SCHEMA.STREAMS())
UNION ALL
SELECT 'Pipes', COUNT(*), COUNT_IF(is_autoingest_enabled = 'true')
FROM TABLE(INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PIPES());

Rollback Procedure

-- Use Time Travel to revert a table
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE prod_db.core.orders
  CLONE prod_db.core.orders AT (TIMESTAMP => '2026-03-21 12:00:00'::TIMESTAMP_NTZ);

-- Suspend problematic tasks
ALTER TASK transform_orders SUSPEND;

-- Revert warehouse changes
ALTER WAREHOUSE PROD_ETL_WH SET WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'MEDIUM';

Error Handling

Resources

• Resource Monitors
• Business Continuity
• Access Control Best Practices

Next Steps

For version upgrades, see snowflake-upgrade-migration.