Question 1 of 20
Two independent warehouses report the same object-resolution failure before either consumes meaningful compute. Which Snowflake layer would you investigate first, and why?
Strong Interview Answer
I would start with Cloud Services because object resolution, privilege checks, parsing, optimization, metadata, and query coordination happen there before the virtual warehouse executes the plan. The fact that two independent warehouses fail the same way before compute is strong evidence that the issue is not isolated warehouse capacity.
What to Listen For
- Cloud Services
- metadata/object resolution
- pre-execution processing
- warehouse independence
Caution
A strong answer distinguishes control-plane responsibilities from virtual-warehouse execution instead of simply saying 'the warehouse is down'.