Question 41

Explanation

✅ The warehouse is experiencing memory "spilling" to local or remote disk.

Explanation:

• Memory spilling occurs when a Snowflake warehouse runs out of available memory, forcing data to be temporarily stored on local disk or remote cloud storage.

• This significantly slows down query performance, especially for JOIN and AGGREGATE operations that require large amounts of memory.

• The Query Profile showing high Local Disk I/O or Remote Disk I/O indicates that data is being spilled, leading to performance bottlenecks.

• To mitigate this issue, Snowflake recommends:

  • Using a larger warehouse to increase available memory.

  • Optimizing queries to process data in smaller batches.

  • Ensuring proper clustering to reduce unnecessary data scanning.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect?

• The warehouse is auto-suspended too frequently. → Incorrect, because auto-suspension affects availability, but does not cause memory spilling.

• The table involved is not properly clustered. → Partially true, but clustering affects scan efficiency, not memory usage.

• The Query Acceleration Service is not enabled. → Incorrect, as Query Acceleration helps with large scans, but does not directly resolve memory spilling.

• There are too many concurrent queries on the warehouse, leading to queuing. → Incorrect, because queuing affects execution timing, but does not cause memory spilling.

You can find more details on resolving memory spilling in Snowflake here and understanding Local vs. Remote Disk I/O bottlenecks here.