Users, Roles, and Warehouses

Updated Jan 14, 2022 ·

Overview

Snowflake uses roles to control access and warehouses to manage compute resources.

Snowflake Roles

Role	Description
ACCOUNTADMIN	Full account access, including billing and security.
SECURITYADMIN	Manages permissions for all objects (databases, tables, users).
USERADMIN	Creates and manages users and roles.
SYSADMIN	Manages objects it creates (databases, tables, warehouses).
PUBLIC	Default role for all users with limited access.

Example: Granting SYSADMIN role to a user

GRANT ROLE SYSADMIN TO USER analyst_user;

Creating a Custom Role

Steps:

• Go to Admin > Users & Roles > Roles.
• Click Add Role, name it, and add a description.
• Grant it SYSADMIN privileges.

Using SQL to create a role for HR analysts:

CREATE ROLE HR_ANALYST;
GRANT ROLE HR_ANALYST TO ROLE SYSADMIN;

Creating a User

Steps:

• Go to Admin > Users & Roles > Users.
• Click Add User, enter details, and set default role.

Using SQL to add a new user with a custom role:

CREATE USER new_analyst PASSWORD = 'SecurePass123' DEFAULT_ROLE = HR_ANALYST;

Virtual Warehouses

When to create a new warehouse:

• When you need larger warehouses for big data processing.
• For smaller queryes, use smaller warehouses.
• Larger warehouses improve query speed.

Warehouse sizes:

• X-Small → 1 compute node
• Small → 2 compute nodes
• Medium → 4 compute nodes

Creating a Virtual Warehouse:

1. Go to Admin > Warehouses.
2. Click Add Warehouse, enter a name, and create it.
3. Grant SYSADMIN role access.

Using SQL to create and grant access:

CREATE WAREHOUSE analyst_wh WAREHOUSE_SIZE = 'SMALL';
GRANT USAGE ON WAREHOUSE analyst_wh TO ROLE SYSADMIN;

Users with the SYSADMIN role can now run queries using this warehouse.