Snowflake accounts on Business Critical or VPS that should confirm they need it
What does ZopNight detect here?
ZopNight flags any Snowflake account running on the `BUSINESS_CRITICAL` or `VPS` edition as a prompt to review whether those premium features are still required. Edition sets the unit price of every credit the account consumes, so an unneeded premium edition inflates all compute, but the change needs compliance sign-off and ZopNight attaches no dollar figure.
Signal and threshold
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Rule IDs | RC-2117 |
| Category | governance |
| Severity | low |
| Metric | account edition |
| Threshold | edition is BUSINESS_CRITICAL or VPS |
| Source | ZopNight |
| Permissions used | GLOBALORGADMIN or ORGADMIN |
Where it applies
Edition multiplies the price of every credit
The Snowflake edition an organization chooses determines the unit cost of the credits and storage it uses, alongside region and whether the account is On Demand or Capacity. Business Critical adds enhanced security and data protection on top of Enterprise, including support for PHI under HIPAA and HITRUST CSF and account failover and failback. Virtual Private Snowflake adds a fully separate environment that shares no hardware with other accounts.
Those are real requirements for regulated workloads. But an account can stay on a premium edition after the project that needed it has ended, and then every warehouse credit is bought at the premium rate.
Checking which edition each account runs
An organization administrator can list every account and its edition:
SHOW ACCOUNTS;The edition column shows each account’s edition. A user who is not an
organization administrator can see their own account’s edition in Snowsight under the user menu,
View Account Details. The editions management page
describes both paths.
What makes an account qualify
The check reads the edition that ZopNight records for the account. It fires when that value is Business Critical or VPS, compared without regard to case. Standard and Enterprise accounts never qualify. There is no metric window and no spend condition: a small premium account qualifies just like a large one.
When no finding is raised
An account whose edition was not captured is skipped rather than assumed to be premium. ZopNight cannot see which premium features you use, so every Business Critical or VPS account is flagged. Treat the finding as a question for your security and compliance owners, not a verdict, and dismiss it once they confirm the edition is needed.
Why the saving is left blank
This is a governance advisory with no dollar amount. The difference between editions depends on your contract’s per-credit rates, which vary by region and by On Demand or Capacity terms, and the decision turns on compliance requirements that no usage metric can settle. What is at stake is the edition premium on all compute and storage the account consumes.
Reviewing and changing the edition
- List what the account uses that only a premium edition provides, for example PHI stored under a business associate agreement or account failover. Get written sign-off from security or compliance that those are no longer needed.
- Stop using every feature unique to the higher edition. Snowflake refuses a downgrade while such features remain in use.
- As organization administrator, run
ALTER ACCOUNT <name> SET EDITION = 'ENTERPRISE';The command accepts STANDARD, ENTERPRISE or BUSINESS_CRITICAL. Managed accounts, including reader accounts, need Snowflake Support instead.