# Underutilized Snowflake Warehouse

Canonical: https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/inefficiencies/underutilized-snowflake-warehouse

[Cloud Efficiency Hub](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub) 

# Underutilized Snowflake Warehouse

## Explanation

Underutilized Snowflake warehouses occur when a workload is assigned a larger warehouse size than necessary. For example, a workload that could efficiently execute on a Medium (M) warehouse may be running on a Large (L) or Extra Large (XL) warehouse.This leads to unnecessary credit consumption without a proportional benefit to performance. Underutilization is often driven by early provisioning decisions that were not later reassessed, or by a desire for marginal speed improvements that do not justify the increased operational cost.

## Relevant Billing Model

Snowflake charges based on the size and active runtime of a warehouse. Larger warehouses consume more credits per second of operation compared to smaller sizes, and relevant size should be used depending on workload requirements.

## Detection

- Analyze historical query activity for each warehouse to assess typical concurrency levels and peak usage patterns

- Evaluate whether workloads experience query queuing or whether the warehouse is frequently underloaded

- Review warehouse credit consumption relative to query volume and complexity over a representative time period

- Confirm with data engineering or application teams whether the warehouse can be downsized without affecting SLAs or performance requirements

## Remediation

- Right-size the Snowflake warehouse by selecting a smaller size (e.g., from L to M, or M to S) that adequately supports workload performance and concurrency needs.

- Implement a periodic review process to reassess warehouse sizing based on observed usage patterns and changes in workload requirements

- Coordinate with business and engineering teams to validate any SLA requirements before resizing

## Relevant Documentation

- [Snowflake Credit Consumption Table](https://www.snowflake.com/legal-files/CreditConsumptionTable.pdf)

- [Warehouse Load History](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/functions/warehouse_load_history)

[Submit Feedback](https://hub.pointfive.co/inefficiencies/underutilized-snowflake-warehouse)

## At a glance

Reference

CER-0168

Cloud provider

Snowflake

Service

Snowflake Virtual Warehouse

Category

[Compute](https://www.pointfive.co/efficiency-hub/service-category/compute)

Inefficiency type

Underutilized Resource

## Contributed by

- Simar Arora 

### Simar Arora

Value Engineer - FinOps @ Snowflake

[LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/simarpreet-arora/)

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Source: the public page above. Product screenshots and illustrative interfaces are examples, not live customer data.