Snowflake Editions¶
Snowflake offers multiple editions to choose from, ensuring that your usage fits your organization’s specific requirements. Each successive edition builds on the previous edition through the addition of edition-specific features and/or higher levels of service. As your organization’s needs change and grow, changing editions is easy.
For information about working with editions, including viewing and changing an account’s edition, see Working with account editions.
Note
The Snowflake Edition that your organization chooses determines the unit costs for the credits and the data storage you use. Other factors that impact unit costs are the region where your Snowflake account is located and whether it is an On Demand or Capacity account:
On Demand: Usage-based pricing with no long-term licensing requirements.
Capacity: Discounted pricing based on an upfront Capacity commitment.
For pricing details, see the pricing page (on the Snowflake website).
Overview of Editions¶
Standard Edition¶
Standard Edition is our introductory level offering, providing full, unlimited access to all of Snowflake’s standard features. It provides a strong balance between features, level of support, and cost.
Enterprise Edition¶
Enterprise Edition provides all the features and services of Standard Edition, with additional features designed specifically for the needs of large-scale enterprises and organizations.
Business Critical Edition¶
Business Critical Edition, formerly known as Enterprise for Sensitive Data (ESD), offers even higher levels of data protection to support the needs of organizations with extremely sensitive data, particularly PHI data that must comply with HIPAA and HITRUST CSF regulations.
It includes all the features and services of Enterprise Edition, with the addition of enhanced security and data protection. In addition, database failover/failback adds support for business continuity and disaster recovery.
Note
As required by HIPAA and HITRUST CSF regulations, before any PHI data can be stored in Snowflake, a signed business associate agreement (BAA) must be in place between your agency/organization and Snowflake Inc.
Virtual Private Snowflake (VPS)¶
Virtual Private Snowflake offers our highest level of security for organizations that have the strictest requirements, such as financial institutions and any other large enterprises that collect, analyze, and share highly sensitive data.
It includes all the features and services of Business Critical Edition, but in a completely separate Snowflake environment, isolated from all other Snowflake accounts (i.e. VPS accounts do not share any type of hardware resources with accounts outside the VPS).
Note
To access your account, you can use an account identifier that specifies your organization name and account name.
If you instead choose to use an account locator as the account identifier, note that the account locator for VPS accounts uses a different format than the accounts for other Snowflake Editions. For details, see Finding the account locator format for a VPS account.
Feature / Edition Matrix¶
For details about the features supported in the China region for each Snowflake Edition, please contact DCC.